News / political
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1 min read
Every 4.23 Seconds
Read more . . . →Elon Musk made $158 billion at Tesla last year. His median employee made $57,243. That means Musk earned a full year of his average worker’s salary every 4.23 seconds. Not every minute. Every 4.23 seconds. You can’t read this paragraph faster than that man out-earns the people building his cars. The AFL-CIO’s latest Paywatch report has the average S&P 500 CEO making 312 times what their median worker earns. Up from 285 the year before. Highest ratio in three decades of counting. And those numbers exclude Musk entirely, because his payout is so large it breaks the average. Factor him...
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Annihilation Is an Appetizer
Read more . . . →“Do I want to go in and annihilate them or do I not?” That’s a real quote from the President of the United States, about a country of 90 million people, delivered like he was choosing between appetizers. Seven months into a war he started. The man treats annihilation like a coin flip. The same week, his administration approved a $24.3 billion F-35 deal to Saudi Arabia. First time an Arab country has been cleared for fifth-generation stealth fighters. Lockheed Martin’s stock ticked up. Pratt & Whitney gets their cut. The defense contractors are having the quarter of their lives....
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The Building Is a Hostage
Read more . . . →The Kennedy Center has been closed since July. The National Symphony Orchestra is scattered across six venues in the DC suburbs because its home is shuttered for a renovation that Congress approved $257 million to pay for. And this week, Trump said the renovation won’t happen unless the courts let him carve his name into the building. When a judge blocked the inscription for the second time, calling the board’s efforts “linguistic gymnastics,” Trump was photographed with a poster reading “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED” and told reporters the place could be “ripped down” if he doesn’t get “recognition.” Congress funded the...
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1 min read
Nobody Leaves the Table
Read more . . . →Donald Trump signed an order yesterday to strip all Canadian-origin goods from federal procurement, $280 billion in contracts, because Canada had the nerve to launch a Buy Canadian policy after he tariffed them. The same day, he told reporters that if the European Union goes ahead with its plan to make Canada an associate member, he’d consider it a “hostile act” and hit Europe with tariffs too. Read that again. He’s kicking Canada off his shelves and threatening to punish anyone who puts them on theirs. This is the trade-policy version of the guy who dumps you and then shows...
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Your Insecurity Is a Revenue Stream
Read more . . . →The manosphere isn’t a movement. It’s a mall. A multibillion-dollar shopping center for men who got told they were broken and then got sold the fix. Supplements, coaching programs, crypto schemes, looksmaxxing “academies” charging three grand to teach you how to hold eye contact. The whole operation runs on one insight: male insecurity, when packaged correctly, is the most dependable revenue stream on the internet. Every influencer in the space figured out the same business model at the same time. Tell young men the world hates them, then charge $49/month for the antidote. The supplements alone are projected to clear...
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Thoughts and Prayers, Palletized
Read more . . . →Fully stocked. The cart by the door is the aid. Every disaster gets the same shipment. The forklift never stops, the shelves are stacked to the roof, and the one cart with actual bandages and water is parked by the exit like an afterthought. Inventory management is apparently the only part of the response anyone budgets for.
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Wounded and Confused Is Not a Foreign Policy
Read more . . . →Pierre Poilievre went to New York last week to go on CNBC and tell Americans that Canadians feel “wounded” and “confused” by Trump’s tariffs. That’s the pitch. That’s the whole strategy from the man who wants to run the country. Fly to the city where the guy tariffing you keeps a gold tower, get on his favourite channel, and describe your entire population as hurt and bewildered. I’ve seen better negotiating posture from a kid who got his lunch money taken and went back to say “that really stung, man, could you maybe not?” Meanwhile Carney is in Strasbourg pitching...
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The Smallest Slice Since 1947
Read more . . . →Since 1947, the government has tracked how much of the economy goes to the people who actually do the work. This year it hit 52.8 percent, the lowest number in the entire dataset. Not during Reagan. Not during the 2008 crash. Not during COVID. Right now, with corporate pre-tax profits at $4.8 trillion in a single quarter. The economy is doing fine. Your cut of it isn’t. Elon Musk’s Tesla compensation last year came out to $158 billion, 2.5 million times what the median Tesla employee made. Two and a half million times. The S&P 500 has gained 600 percent...
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Day 196 and a Tee Time
Read more . . . →It’s Day 196 of the war with Iran. Twenty-nine people have been executed in connection with anti-war protests. And the President of the United States is at a golf tournament in Doonbeg, Ireland, at a course he owns, the one that paid him $20 million last year. Five cargo planes full of armored Secret Service vehicles flew across the Atlantic so the man who started a war could sit in a hospitality tent and watch the Irish Open. Ireland footed a €20 million security bill for the visit. The Secret Service is booking rooms at his hotel, buying food at...
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Fifteen Years of Para-Para-Paradise
Read more . . . →Fifteen years ago today, Coldplay released “Paradise.” It still sucks. The one where Chris Martin sings “para-para-paradise” on a loop like a GPS stuck recalculating. It was the second single off Mylo Xyloto, an album title that sounds like a prescription sedative and does roughly the same for the listener. The video featured a man in an elephant costume escaping a zoo and turning up at a concert in South Africa. That’s not a metaphor I’m reading into it. That is the literal plot. Fifty million YouTube views and counting, because apparently the bar was in hell and Coldplay brought...
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