[ed. Says basically everyone these days. Check out this recent email I got from YouTube. They don't care if you're outraged or not, whether you leave or not, whether you loathe the ads they've polluted their product with or not (enshittification). They know your options are limited (by design). I got the same thing from my insurance company - raising rates without any explanation or justification. They don't care enough to even play-act at being contrite these days.]
***
From YouTube:
YouTube TV has always worked hard to offer you the content you love, delivered the way you want, with features that make it easy to enjoy the best of live TV.
To keep up with the rising cost of content and the investments we make in the quality of our service, we’re updating our monthly price from $72.99/month to $82.99/month starting January 13, 2025. [ed. $10 bucks/mo!]
We don’t make these decisions lightly, and we realize this has an impact on our members. We are committed to bringing you features that are changing the way we watch live TV, like unlimited DVR storage and multiview*, and supporting YouTube TV’s breadth of content and vast on-demand library of movies and shows.
The price of your YouTube TV Base Plan membership will change in your first billing cycle on or after January 13, 2025, and will be charged to your payment method on file going forward. (...)
We hope YouTube TV continues to be your service of choice, but we understand that some of our members may want to cancel their subscriptions. As always, family managers have the ability to pause or cancel anytime. You can find more information in our Help Center.
With lots of exciting shows and live events ahead in the new year, we’ll continue to strive to deliver the best of TV, all in one place. Thank you for being a loyal YouTube TV member.
Sincerely, The YouTube TV team
[ed. FYI. Basically the same thing from my State Farm Insurance "team".]
Concorde - The Towering Supersonic Airliner. The airliner could maintain a supercruise up to Mach 2.04 (2,170 km/h; 1,350 mph) at an altitude of 60,000 ft (18.3 km) via:
[ed. Ahh. Wasn't too long ago when cars and jets were cool. And phones were... attached to walls.]
The decision to overturn The Onion’s purchase of Infowars is a massive mistake that not only ignores the law but also profoundly misses the point of the nature of parody and satire, something we especially need in the serious and severe of times.
The ruling by Houston US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez takes aim at a move that was bold, creative, and quintessentially satirical, framing it as frivolous when it’s actually rooted in some of the deepest traditions of free speech. By doing this, Judge Lopez not only misunderstands the purpose of satire but also sets a dangerous precedent that could have a chilling effect on how we critique and challenge power in today’s media landscape.
At its heart, satire is a tool for social commentary. It takes the absurdities, hypocrisies, or excesses of public life and magnifies them, showing us the truth in ways that are sharp, funny, and often painfully accurate. Think of it as holding up a funhouse mirror to reality—except what you see is a more honest reflection than what’s presented to us by those in power.
The Onion has built its entire reputation on this principle, skewering everything from politics to pop culture in ways that are both biting and hilarious. So when The Onion decided to buy Infowars, it wasn’t just a business transaction, it was a profound societal statement. It was saying, “Look how absurd this platform is, that we, as a satire outlet, can buy it and make it into what it always was – a complete and total joke.
But the judge didn’t seem to get this. Instead, the ruling dismissed the purchase as a stunt, implying that satire and business don’t mix.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how satire works in a modern context. Satire doesn’t stay confined to newspaper columns or stand-up routines. It can happen through art, performance, social media, and yes, even through corporate acquisitions.
So when The Onion bought Infowars, it wasn’t just poking fun but was rather leveraging the mechanics of capitalism to make a larger point about how misinformation spreads and how ridiculous it is that a platform like Infowars has managed to thrive in the first place.
This decision also fails to appreciate the First Amendment’s role in protecting satire, which has long been recognized as essential to free speech.
In landmark cases such asHustler Magazine v. Falwell, the Supreme Court made it clear that satire—even or particularly when offensive or outrageous—is protected because it contributes to the robust exchange of ideas that democracy depends on.
By stepping into the middle of what should be a creative expression of that right, the court has undermined one of the most important tools we have for holding powerful entities accountable. And let’s face it—Infowars was and probably still is a powerful entity. Its influence on public discourse, despite being rooted in conspiracy theories and misinformation, is undeniable. The Onion’s ownership could have served as a brilliant counter-narrative, showing that satire has the power to dismantle even the loudest megaphones of disinformation.
What’s even more baffling is how the court ignored the legal basics of the case. The Onion followed all the necessary rules for acquiring a business. It wasn’t some rogue operation—they played their acquisition by the book. The judge, however, seemed to suggest that because the purchase had a satirical motive, it somehow wasn’t legitimate.
That’s a dangerous precedent. Businesses make acquisitions for all kinds of reasons—strategic, symbolic, even philanthropic. Why should satire be singled out as less valid? The judge is essentially saying that if you’re not in it purely for profit, your motives don’t count. That’s not how corporate law works, and it’s certainly not how it should.
by Aron Solomon, LitHub | Read more: Image: uncredited [ed. Hmm. Lots of interesting arguments here. Would it have made a difference if a hedge fund had bought Infowars instead of The Onion (even if the intent was the same)? What about big boys buying out potential threats/competitors eg. Facebook/Snapchat, etc.?]
The Bride of Frankenstein still with Elsa Lanchester and Boris Karloff.
via: [ed. I just finished reading Frankenstein, the actual book by Mary Shelly. Quite different than the movies (of course). Did you know the monster was really quite an erudite (self-taught), benevolent and sympathetic character who turned on society only after society turned on him? Maybe. But also how the story is mostly about him stalking and haunting his creator Dr. Frankenstein (who was only in his early 20s at the time) with just one request? To create a partner he could love and who could understand and share in his misery (living in purgatory, between life and death). The doctor (vascillating between admiration and disgust for his creation) initially agreed, but then, feeling the burden of bringing another monster into the world, went back on his word... to his everlasting misfortune. Which is to say, the Bride in this version was a Hollywood creation, not Shelly's.]
"My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor; and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being, and become linked to the chain of existence and events to which I am now excluded."
"I was moved. I shuddered when I thought of the possible consequences of my consent; but I felt that there was some justice in his argument. His tale, and the feelings he now expressed, proved him to be a creature of fine sensations; and did I not, as his maker, owe him all the portion of happiness that it was in my power to bestow?"
The bill would mandate corporations with over $1bn in annual revenue obtain a federal charter as a “United States Corporation” under the obligation to consider the interests of all stakeholders and corporations engaging in repeated and egregious illegal conduct can have their charters revoked.
The legislation would also mandate that at least 40% of a corporation’s board of directors be chosen directly by employees and would enact restrictions on corporate directors and officers from selling stocks within five years of receiving the shares or three years within a company stock buyback.
All political expenditures by corporations would also have to be approved by at least 75% of shareholders and directors.
What concerns me about the framing in the Guardian, and it’s even more apparent in the Common Dream account below, is that it IMHO does not make it clear that the maximizing shareholder value is a made up economists’ creed, first promulgated by Milton Friedman in a New York Times op-ed. It is not a legal duty, as management touts regularly and falsely assert. Legally, equity is a residual claim. All other obligations, like payments to employees, suppliers, creditors, landlords, tax authorities, successful litigants, regulatory fines, come first.
From the early days of this website, we’ve written from time to time about why the “shareholder value” theory of corporate governance was made up by economists and has no legal foundation. It has also proven to be destructive in practice, save for CEO and compensation consultants who have gotten rich from it.
Further confirmation comes from a must-read article in American Prospect by Steven Pearlstein, When Shareholder Capitalism Came to Town. It recounts how until the early 1990s, corporations had a much broader set of concerns, most importantly, taking care of customers, as well as having a sense of responsibility for their employees and the communities in which they operated. Equity is a residual economic claim. As we wrote in 2013:
Directors and officers, broadly speaking, have a duty of care and duty of loyalty to the corporation. From that flow more specific obligations under Federal and state law. But notice: those responsibilities are to the corporation, not to shareholders in particular…..Equity holders are at the bottom of the obligation chain. Directors do not have a legal foundation for given them preference over other parties that legitimately have stronger economic interests in the company than shareholders do….
One of their big props to this campaign was the claim that companies existed to promote shareholder value. This had been a minority view in the academic literature in the 1940s and 1950s. Milton Friedman took it up an intellectually incoherent New York Times op-ed in 1970….
Why The Shareholder Value Theory Has No Legal Foundation
Why do so many corporate boards treat the shareholder value theory as gospel? Aside from the power of ideology and constant repetition in the business press, Pearlstein, drawing on the research of Cornell law professor Lynn Stout, describes how a key decision has been widely misapplied:
Let’s start with the history. The earliest corporations, in fact, were generally chartered not for private but for public purposes, such as building canals or transit systems. Well into the 1960s, corporations were broadly viewed as owing something in return to the community that provided them with special legal protections and the economic ecosystem in which they could grow and thrive.
Legally, no statutes require that companies be run to maximize profits or share prices. In most states, corporations can be formed for any lawful purpose. Lynn Stout, a Cornell law professor, has been looking for years for a corporate charter that even mentions maximizing profits or share price. So far, she hasn’t found one. Companies that put shareholders at the top of their hierarchy do so by choice, Stout writes, not by law…
For many years, much of the jurisprudence coming out of the Delaware courts—where most big corporations have their legal home—was based around the “business judgment” rule, which held that corporate directors have wide discretion in determining a firm’s goals and strategies, even if their decisions reduce profits or share prices. But in 1986, the Delaware Court of Chancery ruled that directors of the cosmetics company Revlon had to put the interests of shareholders first and accept the highest price offered for the company. As Lynn Stout has written, and the Delaware courts subsequently confirmed, the decision was a narrowly drawn exception to the business–judgment rule that only applies once a company has decided to put itself up for sale. But it has been widely—and mistakenly—used ever since as a legal rationale for the primacy of shareholder interests and the legitimacy of share-price maximization.
[ed. If we were truly a properly functioning democracy/meritocracy Elizabeth Warren would have been elected President years ago. Glad she's still a US Senator though.]
Bill Belichick, the most successful coach in NFL history, is off to college.
The architect of six Super Bowl titles with the New England Patriots has agreed a deal with North Carolina to become the school’s new head coach. A year after his exit from the Patriots, he is leaving the pro game behind to dive into the wild west of college sports in the pay-for-play era.
When you first heard the news, you probably shrugged your shoulders. It looked like a vintage case of an out-of-work coach sending a message to NFL owners: I’m ready to work. But Belichick’s interest in the college game is sincere. He sat down with North Carolina’s decision-makers for multiple interviews last week, and confirmed his interest in the job on the Pat McAfee Show.
Belichick’s move is unprecedented. In his 49-year coaching career, he has never worked outside the NFL. But Belichick has spent the last year traveling around college campuses to understand the sport’s new landscape. He will become the first Super Bowl-winning coach to drop down to the college level without any college coaching experience.
The question is: Why? (...)
[ed. The NFL wasn't too hot on him (for various good reasons), and...]
Beyond just his age, there is another hangup for NFL teams: Belichick is no ordinary coach. Wherever he landed, he would require full autonomy over a team’s roster, salary cap and draft, the kind of singular power that ownership groups are shying away from – and the sort of power they would be unlikely to hand to someone approaching their mid-70s.
The dynastic Patriots were not built on the “Patriot Way”. It was the “Belichick Way”. That will carry over to North Carolina. But in the NFL, there are few overlords. The era of Bill Parcells, Bill Walsh or Belichick running every department is gone. In 2024, franchises are siloed. There is overlap between departments, but the coaching ranks have become so transitory that the head coach no longer controls huge swaths of the building. That is left to a team president or general manager. A coaching staff may come and go, but more often than not key members of the personnel and analytics departments, nutrition staff and back office remain the same.
That is not Belichick’s vision. In New England, he was the all-seeing, all-commanding emperor. He ran the front office, coaching staff and signed off on all football decisions. Only a handful of franchises would cede that control to one individual in the modern game, and they’re not handing those keys to a 73-year-old who may only stick around for four or five seasons. Those odds were even longer given Belichick’s recent poor track record as a general manager. After presiding over six Super Bowls with the Patriots, Belichick’s magic touch wore off once Tom Brady moved on to Tampa Bay. By the end of his time in New England, Belichick the general manager had essentially kneecapped Belichick the coach. The source of his contentious departure from the Patriots was New England’s owner, Robert Kraft, looking to wrestle back some power.
In college, Belichick will have free rein. The head coach remains omnipotent in college football, even as it inches toward a pro model. They are a CEO, general manager, head coach and play-caller wrapped into one. If Belichick was willing to relinquish control, then an NFL franchise may have come calling on Belichick the coach. But by prioritizing his authority over an organization, college was the only option.
Even at one of college football’s upper-tier institutions, it’s unlikely Belichick would have been able to amass total control. Alabama, Texas or Ohio State are not turning their programs over to a first-time college coach in his 70s. But North Carolina is a second-tier program in a second-tier conference. The school’s only shot at landing a coaching legend was to agree to Belichick’s demands, allowing him to an organization in his image.
by Oliver Connolly, The Guardian | Read more: Image:David Butler II/USA Today Sports
"In October of 1883, a paper in the nation’s capital reported under the heading “Current Gossip” that “an Iowa woman has spent seven years embroidering the solar system on a quilt” — a news item originally printed in Iowa and syndicated widely in newspapers across the country that autumn and winter. The New York Times reprinted the report as it appeared in the Iowa paper, dismissively qualifying it as a “somewhat comical statement.”
The woman in question, Ellen Harding Baker (June 8, 1847–March 30, 1886), was not a person to be dismissed with a patronizing chuckle. Baker taught science in rural Iowa, in an era when most institutions of higher education were still closed to women, all the whilst raising her five surviving children. She used her Solar System quilt to illustrate her astronomy lectures. To ensure the accuracy of her embroidered depiction, Baker traveled to the Chicago Observatory to view sunspots and a comet — most likely the Great Comet of 1882, which had become a national attraction — through the professional telescope there.
"If I were in the employ of one of the organs of state security, what would I regard as the salient features of the case? And where would I seek more control than I already have? ABC News summarizes The Adjuster’s stay in Manhattan. I have underlined the relevant topics:
The gunman used a fake ID and paid cash during the 10 days he was in the city, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told reporters Friday. He also kept his face covered except while checking in at a hostel. He was captured on some of the thousands of surveillance cameras blanketing Manhattan, allowing police to build a timeline of his movements.
Now I’ll present aggregations of these three topics — Cash, Masking, Fake IDs — showing that the discourse is already primed to regard them as problems to be solved, if future copy cat Adjusters are to be avoided.
***
[ed. I'd also add 3-D printed guns to the mix. I've learned a new term today: jury nullification.]
(From the comments): How are they ever going to get a jury through voix dire?
Question to potential juror – Have you, your family or friends ever had any issues with a medical claim from an insurance company? That would eliminate the entire country.
***
Healy: Mangione keeps getting called a “folk hero” — I understand it, but assassinations perpetuate a culture of violence and fear. Why are so many people still talking about this shooting as if it’s justifiable, which “folk hero” seems to imply? (...)
Tufekci: Dealing with health insurance companies when you are vulnerable — facing illness, pain and loss — and knowing that such a company is profiting off you is a visceral, enraging experience. Some people want to be rescued, even by an outlaw. A recent Senate report says UnitedHealthcare more than doubled the rate of denials for post-acute care for the elderly as it pressured the company’s human reviewers to strictly hew to the algorithmic recommendation system that it had introduced. The sense that a cold, calculating, profit-making automaton can come at a person when they feel the most fragile, and without accountability and recourse, is the type of environment that can find people cheering on vigilantes.
Goldberg: Whenever I’ve had a health scare, or am waiting for the results of routine tests like mammograms, I tend to be as panicked about all the potential paperwork as about, you know, dying. And the thing is, these companies are purely extractive. Relative to a single-payer system, they create no value whatsoever. (...)
McMillan Cottom: I thought about how we have an economy with perverse incentives and impact. If billionaires and C.E.O.s want to enjoy the spoils of power, visibility and access in our celebrity culture, they have to understand that they are in essence a public entity — a stand-in for industry but also for politics. I make this point because the moralizing about the public response to the killing conflates a personal dimension of this story — a murder and the fallout for the victim’s family — with the public dimension, about industries that affect and control our lives, our futures, our pain. A family lost their kin and a community lost a member. That is a personal tragedy. At the same time, a public actor was presumably targeted because he had a tremendous amount of power over people’s well-being. The system has to make a profit and, in doing so, the system victimizes a lot of people.
Tufekci: I think we should also look at the stories we tell ourselves about how to solve systemic problems. In Hollywood, it’s the lone-wolf vigilante or rogue C.I.A. agent who breaks the rules, takes revenge and makes things better. People are naturally drawn to a character they can cheer for, rather than analyses of power and policy and prolonged slogs to change how the system works. People with wealth can hire people to do that work for them and use their money to change the system to their advantage, over time, while the public is left with some popcorn and the chance to cheer for the movie vigilante. (...)
McMillan Cottom: It goes much deeper. You call it populist rage, Patrick. I’m not against that description. But it doesn’t quite capture that the other side stokes that rage. The reaction is a defense of one public who is at odds with the interests of another public. Markets create moral economies. Whether you call it crony capitalism or just an unfair economy, the market sets the rules for which lives matter. We have set up a system of interlocking ninth circles of hell for all of our basic needs. Housing is a noose of landlord interests, developer exploitation and rising costs. Transportation is a Gordian knot of failing infrastructure and limited vision that traps us in neighborhoods and lifestyles that make us sicker and meaner. Our moral economy is trash.
Healy: And how does the health care industry fit in here, Tressie?
McMillan Cottom: Nowhere is the perverse nature of our moral economy more evident than health care. It is not just expensive. It is often tied to jobs people either cannot get or cannot afford to leave if they want to be able to see a doctor. Health care is one of the biggest reasons that Americans file for bankruptcy. The incentives are to put profit over people. We know this and yet we also gaslight millions of Americans. We tell them that the system is fair and meritocratic, that their quality of life is not deteriorating and, if it is, then they did not work hard enough. Scam culture makes everyone a mark. The moral economy of a scam culture says that everyone deserves to be a mark. That is dehumanizing.
Agency Trump and Musk Want to 'Delete' Set to Deliver $1.8 Billion to Scammed US Consumers
In the coming weeks, as President-elect Donald Trump's second term approaches and his pledge to dismantle key agencies potentially comes closer to fruition, 4.3 million consumers are set to receive checks from one of the agencies the incoming administration wants to "delete."
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced Thursday that it will soon begin distributing a historic $1.8 billion to millions of people who were charged illegal junk fees or defrauded by credit repair companies including Lexington Law and CreditRepair.com.
The money will be distributed from the CFPB's victim relief fund, which was created by Congress and is financed entirely by civil penalties paid by companies and individuals who violate consumer financial protection laws.
The fund has distributed $3.3 billion to consumers since its inception, and the CFPB said the forthcoming payment will be its largest ever.
"Lexington Law and CreditRepair.com exploited vulnerable consumers who were trying to rebuild their credit, charging them illegal junk fees for results they hadn't delivered," said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. "This historic distribution of $1.8 billion demonstrates the CFPB's commitment to making consumers whole." (...)
If the CFPB payments are divided equally among those who were wrongly charged fees by the two companies, each consumer would receive about $419.
The payments are being sent days after the CFPB proposed a rule aimed at reining in data brokers who sell people's personal information.
As Common Dreams reported, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has expressed concern about the practices of data brokers—but as Trump's nominee to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a yet-to-be-created commission that would cut regulations and government spending, Musk has pledged to "delete" the CFPB.
Filmmaker and media activist Danny Ledonne said Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, another businessman nominated to lead DOGE, likely want to do away with the CFPB because the agency acts "in the interest of regular people."
Liz Zelnick, director of the Economic Security and Corporate Power Program at government watchdog Accountable.US, said the upcoming $1.8 billion payout shows why the CFPB should remain in operation.
"When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is allowed to fully do its job, Americans only stand to benefit," said Zelnick. "Between surprise fees and misleading business practices, today's victory affirms the importance of the CFPB for defending people across the country from shady industry actors."
[ed. Speculation so far, but not without foundation. As noted here, Rohit Chopra and Lina Kahn have been spectacular advocates for consumer protection. If Musk/Trump want to 'delete" the CFPB they do so at their peril. I mean, it's called Consumer Protection for a reason. Smarter to just install some flunky to gum up the works. Which reminds me, you know one of the most infuriating things I always hear dumb people say? "Who could've known". Well, maybe anyone with half a brain, and everyone else screaming warnings forever? Like all that fake climate change stuff? And living in a trailer in hurricane alley. And that awful Biden economy? People getting played on and on and on (is there still a War on Christmas? I forget). Anyway. See also: ‘The mother of all bubbles’ in the U.S. is sucking money away from the rest of the world, market expert says (Fortune/Yahoo News). Also: Alarms Blaring That AI Bubble Could Collapse(Futurism/The Byte).]
[ed. Notice this talk was given in 2014. Things are much worse now and the pitchforks have been a long time coming. Maybe last week's killing of a United Healthcare executive indicates a boiling point (or data point).]
Nick Hanauer: You probably don't know me, but I am one of those .01 percenters that you hear about and read about, and I am by any reasonable definition a plutocrat. And tonight, what I would like to do is speak directly to other plutocrats, to my people, because it feels like it's time for us all to have a chat. Like most plutocrats, I too am a proud and unapologetic capitalist. I have founded, cofounded or funded over 30 companies across a range of industries. I was the first non-family investor in Amazon.com. I cofounded a company called aQuantive that we sold to Microsoft for 6.4 billion dollars. My friends and I, we own a bank. I tell you this — (Laughter) —unbelievable, right?
I tell you this to show that my life is like most plutocrats. I have a broad perspective on capitalism and business, and I have been rewarded obscenely for that with a life that most of you all can't even imagine: multiple homes, a yacht, my own plane, etc., etc., etc. But let's be honest: I am not the smartest person you've ever met. I am certainly not the hardest working. I was a mediocre student. I'm not technical at all. I can't write a word of code. Truly, my success is the consequence of spectacular luck, of birth, of circumstance and of timing. But I am actually pretty good at a couple of things. One, I have an unusually high tolerance for risk, and the other is I have a good sense, a good intuition about what will happen in the future, and I think that that intuition about the future is the essence of good entrepreneurship.
So what do I see in our future today, you ask? I see pitchforks, as in angry mobs with pitchforks, because while people like us plutocrats are living beyond the dreams of avarice, the other 99 percent of our fellow citizens are falling farther and farther behind. In 1980, the top one percent of Americans shared about eight percent of national [income], while the bottom 50 percent of Americans shared 18 percent. Thirty years later, today, the top one percent shares over 20 percent of national [income], while the bottom 50 percent of Americans share 12 or 13. If the trend continues, the top one percent will share over 30 percent of national [income] in another 30 years, while the bottom 50 percent of Americans will share just six.
You see, the problem isn't that we have some inequality. Some inequality is necessary for a high-functioning capitalist democracy. The problem is that inequality is at historic highs today and it's getting worse every day. And if wealth, power, and income continue to concentrate at the very tippy top, our society will change from a capitalist democracy to a neo-feudalist rentier society like 18th-century France. That was France before the revolution and the mobs with the pitchforks.
So I have a message for my fellow plutocrats and zillionaires and for anyone who lives in a gated bubble world: Wake up. Wake up. It cannot last. Because if we do not do something to fix the glaring economic inequities in our society, the pitchforks will come for us, for no free and open society can long sustain this kind of rising economic inequality. It has never happened. There are no examples. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state or an uprising. The pitchforks will come for us if we do not address this. It's not a matter of if, it's when. And it will be terrible when they come for everyone, but particularly for people like us plutocrats.
I know I must sound like some liberal do-gooder. I'm not. I'm not making a moral argument that economic inequality is wrong. What I am arguing is that rising economic inequality is stupid and ultimately self-defeating. Rising inequality doesn't just increase our risks from pitchforks, but it's also terrible for business too. So the model for us rich guys should be Henry Ford. When Ford famously introduced the $5 day, which was twice the prevailing wage at the time, he didn't just increase the productivity of his factories, he converted exploited autoworkers who were poor into a thriving middle class who could now afford to buy the products that they made. Ford intuited what we now know is true, that an economy is best understood as an ecosystem and characterized by the same kinds of feedback loops you find in a natural ecosystem, a feedback loop between customers and businesses. Raising wages increases demand, which increases hiring, which in turn increases wages and demand and profits, and that virtuous cycle of increasing prosperity is precisely what is missing from today's economic recovery.
And this is why we need to put behind us the trickle-down policies that so dominate both political parties and embrace something I call middle-out economics. Middle-out economics rejects the neoclassical economic idea that economies are efficient, linear, mechanistic, that they tend towards equilibrium and fairness, and instead embraces the 21st-century idea that economies are complex, adaptive, ecosystemic, that they tend away from equilibrium and toward inequality, that they're not efficient at all but are effective if well managed. This 21st-century perspective allows you to clearly see that capitalism does not work by [efficiently] allocating existing resources. It works by [efficiently] creating new solutions to human problems. The genius of capitalism is that it is an evolutionary solution-finding system. It rewards people for solving other people's problems. The difference between a poor society and a rich society, obviously, is the degree to which that society has generated solutions in the form of products for its citizens. The sum of the solutions that we have in our society really is our prosperity, and this explains why companies like Google and Amazon and Microsoft and Apple and the entrepreneurs who created those companies have contributed so much to our nation's prosperity.
This 21st-century perspective also makes clear that what we think of as economic growth is best understood as the rate at which we solve problems. But that rate is totally dependent upon how many problem solvers — diverse, able problem solvers — we have, and thus how many of our fellow citizens actively participate, both as entrepreneurs who can offer solutions, and as customers who consume them. But this maximizing participation thing doesn't happen by accident. It doesn't happen by itself. It requires effort and investment, which is why all highly prosperous capitalist democracies are characterized by massive investments in the middle class and the infrastructure that they depend on.
We plutocrats need to get this trickle-down economics thing behind us, this idea that the better we do, the better everyone else will do. It's not true. How could it be? I earn 1,000 times the median wage, but I do not buy 1,000 times as much stuff, do I? I actually bought two pairs of these pants, what my partner Mike calls my manager pants. I could have bought 2,000 pairs, but what would I do with them? (Laughter) How many haircuts can I get? How often can I go out to dinner? No matter how wealthy a few plutocrats get, we can never drive a great national economy. Only a thriving middle class can do that.
[ed. This is what gets me about MAGA idiots (and they are idiots for being punked into believing that it's the libs, immigrants, welfare moms, government workers, teachers, scientists - anyone (this week)other than merciless corporations and plutocrats who are actually in control and screwing up this country). Whether you're liberal or conservative we're all in the same boat, yet they've effectively turned us against each other. Of course there are cultural differences (as there always have been) but if you're middle class - high, middle, low, doesn't matter - and aspire to better economic opportunities or just protection from the precariousness of a sudden health problem or unexpected bill, how does electing a lying kleptocratic billionaire as your standard bearer improve your/our situation? We're all about to find out. See also: How one of the world’s richest men is avoiding $8 billion in taxes (Seattle Times). ($8000 million dollars. Doesn't like to pay taxes).]
You might have noticed Google’s ongoing efforts to stuff artificial intelligence features into every corner of its products, and that’s certainly the case with Chrome. One tweak recently made to the desktop browser is the addition of a Google Lens button that pops up every time you click inside the address bar.
According to Google, this shortcut is intended to help you “easily select, search and ask questions about anything you see on the web” and actually builds on the functionality that was already there: For some time, you’ve been able to right-click on an image and choose Search with Google Lens or find the feature in the Chrome menu.
Now it’s more accessible than ever, and you can quickly refine and edit searches via Google Lens, too (it works a lot like Circle to Search, which is essentially Google Lens repackaged for mobile devices). Here’s how to use the new feature and the various ways it can prove useful.
The best uses for Google Lens in Chrome
The example case Google typically gives when it comes to Google Lens is shopping. You see a bag, a lampshade, or a sneaker that you like, and you can run a visual search for it. Results pop up on the screen from retailers, meaning you can click through and buy it or at least figure out what it is.
It makes more sense than running a traditional Google search and describing what you’re looking at—” a boxy-looking suitcase with black trim and ridges along the side” is far less precise, for example. By enlisting the help of Google Lens, you’ll get more useful results more often.
We’ve written about Google Lens several times over the years, and it’s not just for shopping—it’s also for looking up information about the world around you (or, in this case, the browser tab in front of you). You can use the Lens functionality to identify a piece of art, a person, a breed of dog, or a type of plant, for instance.
You can also use Google Lens to look up context and further information about a store, a landmark, or an album cover you’ve come across. Say you’re watching a video that features a statue you think you’ve seen before. You can use Google Lens to run a search to find out the name of the statue and where it’s located.
As Google’s AI gets smarter, Google Lens becomes even more helpful. It can now solve math equations and translate text, whether inside an image or video or displayed plainly on the webpage. With text selection included, too, you can run a normal Google search for any word or phrase you come across.
How to use Google Lens in Chrome
The Google Lens integration inside Google Chrome on the desktop is pretty seamless: With any page open in a tab, click the address bar at the top of the screen, and the Google Lens button will appear. If the website URL takes up the whole address bar, you’ll see the Google Lens icon, which looks like a camera.
Click the Google Lens button to enter search mode. If you want to run a visual search for something in an image or video still, you can click and drag to draw a box around it. Alternatively, just click once on an image or something inside an image to have it automatically selected (though this can be a bit hit-and-miss).
After the initial search has been run, you can click and drag the handles around the edges of the selection to change its boundaries. You can also click and drag somewhere else on the page to run a new search. Your results pop up in a new panel on the right—click on the panel to visit a search result page, or use the icons in the top right corner to pin the panel inside Chrome or close it down. (...)
Google Lens works with text, too. If you activate the feature and hover the cursor over a text block, the icon will change. You can then click and drag to highlight the necessary words. This runs a more conventional Google search in the panel on the right, and you’ll also see options pop up on the page to Copy or Translate the text.
by David Nield, Gizmodo | Read more: Image: Google
[ed. With all the hype, I've been skeptical of anything described as an AI 'improvement' but this feature might actually be useful.]
