Alan Cole
@AlanMCole
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International and Federal Taxes @taxfoundation High Priest of #DBCFT Twitter
Joined July 2012
My non-online wife just remarked unprompted “seems like a lot of young people DoorDash restaurant meals for $60 and then complain about inflation.”. I nearly jumped out of my chair. One of Econ Twitter‘s most annoying discourses breaking containment into real life.
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Oh hi I am Microsoft, the world's most valuable company, a title I have held intermittently since 1998. I am especially known for my dominant hold on enterprise software. You now have two email applications, named "Outlook" and "Outlook (new)." This is very professional.
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Oh my god, it's happening again. And it's the same pattern every time. They put themselves in the mindset of the red car, wanting to turn right, and they're like "why isn't the blue car moving?". It does not occur to them at all that maybe the blue car intends to go straight.
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It's still unbelievable ten years later that the "SimCity" franchise created an offering so terrible that it lost the SimCity game market, completely, in a single generation, to the upstart "Cities: Skylines.".
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An Amtrak train left DC without any of its passengers because of their famously dumb boarding procedure where they don’t let you wait on the platform. cc @mattyglesias @jbhenchman
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Nobody who ever pressed Ctrl-V has wanted to "keep source formatting" in what they pasted. Ever.
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I cannot express just how out of control the situation is with AI fake photos on Facebook.
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I need you to understand that the combination of stocks down, bonds down, dollar weaker, in tandem, is not just markets doing market-y stuff unrelated to you. It's a very bad combination that's going to make you poorer in a variety of ways, some obvious, some more subtle.
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Early childhood development is crazy. <0.5 years: basically doesn’t do anything . 2.5 years: already obviously becoming the most capable species on earth, with godlike intelligence even relative to the cleverest border collie, and fast increasing dexterity in the hands.
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It's very funny that Frozen tries to do all this stuff to subvert Disney Princess-ism, and it's all completely lost on the 3-year-old girls who just love Elsa in the princess outfit.
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@jake_jmc20985 Eventually, we will have Teams, Teams (new), Teams (final), and Teams (final v2).
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Quiet part out loud:. "We are not in a position to win the White House. But we do have a real opportunity to win something historic. We could deny Kamala Harris the state of MI. And the polls show that most likely Harris cannot win the election without MI.".
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She is voting Democrat, but thinks the Democrats stole the 2020 election and can steal future elections if they need to. In the sense, her vote is thus unnecessary. But she is casting it anyway, out of longstanding personal spite for Elon Musk. I am not making this up.
So I'm thinking about this. for as stupid and incoherent Kamala Harris is and as trash as Walz is, and despite the fact that Kamala Harris is the only Democratic Nominee to not have actively campainged in a Primary (the most undemocratic shit ever, and really says alot.
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@MattZeitlin James Cameron is one of those people where it's genuinely weird that even one person like him exists on the entire globe. Movie director who has only made 9 movies in five decades, ~all of them overbudget and delayed but somehow huge commercial successes + deep sea submarine guy.
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Assad is still in possession of the Dynasty Key and the Long Tenure Key. So his odds of retaining the presidency remain strong, even with recent setbacks.
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The excuse that the penguin island policy is about averting tariff avoidance from rerouted goods fails on roughly three levels:. 1. There is no port through which goods could be rerouted.
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@rSanti97 What’s confusing to me is that if there’s lots of extra food, you want people to eat it so you don’t end up with an insane amount of one type of leftover. Totally normal to ration if you happen to cook too little of something. But that sounds like it wasn’t the case here.
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I see a lot of people reacting to this story with confusion. It unfortunately makes sense to me. If it confuses you, just trust me that you are very lucky to not understand it. I sincerely hope that you continue to not understand.
BREAKING . New Mexico’s Chief Medical Examiner says that Gene Hackman most likely died on February 18 due to heart disease, with advanced Alzheimer’s disease being a contributing factor. His wife, Betsy, predeceased him, with the Medical Examiner placing her death on February
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If you’re just logging back on now and seeing this—. A late breaking poll totally changed the state of the race and you weren’t there to Monitor The Situation. Because of your inattention, your candidate is now going to lose. I am sorry you had to find out this way.
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The actual Margot Robbie Best Actress snub was six years ago BTW.
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If I am not mistaken, my Microsoft Authenticator app requested that I use the Microsoft Authenticator app to log into the very same Microsoft Authenticator account it was requesting me to authenticate from. Ladies and gentlemen, the most valuable company in history.
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The metaphor of “82-year-old Californian single-family homeowner would literally rather fall off a cliff into the ocean than change anything about the built environment” is a little bit on the nose, don’t you think?.
NEW: The owner of a $16M California mansion that is on the verge of falling into the ocean, is refusing to leave his home. 82-year-old Lewis Bruggeman says his house is "fine" & isn't worried about it falling into the ocean after a recent storm eroded the cliffside. "The house
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Forget the other commentary for a sec and look at the gender ratio here. And then. think for a little bit about *why* it might have a gender ratio like that.
This is Russia a day after the failed mutiny. No Pride flags or drag queens in sight, either.
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I can confirm I've replicated the CEA calculation for the so-called "tariffs charged to the USA" on these charts. It is the Census FT900 trade data, exhibit 4, for year 2024, and the formula is MAX(10%,(imports-exports)/imports) per-country on a customs basis.
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Imagine writing a short joke tweet expecting maybe 60 likes at best, and then finding out over the next week that you’ve functionally ground one of America’s top four newspapers to a halt.
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A metaphor for the whole US right: the Thomas Sowell Quotes account. It cheers anti-market policies and is run by an engagement farmer from Macedonia. Meanwhile, the real Thomas Sowell, an intelligent and very much alive man, is criticizing Trump trade policies this week.
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I don't mean to be mean, but I think Mr. Desai is a general-purpose comms employee and he cannot read the semi-academic-econ language used in this note. He doesn't understand that his link confirms Surowiecki's point rather than offering evidence against it.
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I'm looking forward to the part of parenting where children's books actually get really good. It'll be 2-4 more years, I think. (My little one is almost two.). I know it's from a children's book, but there is not, nor will there ever be, a better expression of this thought.
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I am 35. One thing I’ve lived through several cycles of at this point is “wow, the person who pulled off an improbable, audacious, escalating series of scams is actually really charming, and I kind of like them.”. Yes, of course they are. That’s how they pulled it off.
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I’ve seen enough. I don’t have an election call or anything. I’ve just seen enough.
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There are 2 (two) types of Tolkien name. 1. See, Aragorn is one of the Dúnedain, plural of Dúnedan (because that is how plurals are constructed in Sindarin). It means West-Men. If you consult my pronunciation guide. 2. Ah yes, that's Mount Doom. It's a big scary mountain.
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@MattZeitlin Now defending speedy eviction even as he himself is being speedily evicted.
@katewillett This is correct.
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Have we defeated the virus in a quick, cost-effective way? No. But have we developed a strong sense of trust between different parts of society, which will help us work together as a team going forward? Also no.
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Americans talking about class are like:. 99th% SES person: We're upper middle class. Me: Yeah? How many former SCOTUS clerks do you personally know?. Them: I guess. seven among my friends and professional contacts, but double digits if you count my law school professors. Why?.
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Not to be too conspiratorial, but I think the count for the rate limit is fake. When they have the server capacity, they show you more tweets, and when they don’t, they don’t. Simple as.
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There's something very funny about a Bridgewater CEO and a Goldman partner having to pretend to be thrilled to have a basement office in a building with a rodent problem.
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I've experienced this maneuver about five times at the same intersection while dropping off my daughter at school, including twice today. Look, I am not an anti-car bike-hippie loon, but some people's licenses should be confiscated and their cars crushed into cubes.
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I spent the last year as a "cautious on COVID" type. I researched and followed my best guesses on how not to get sick. By a mix of prudence and luck, I never did. It's been a ride, fellow COVID-hawks. I have few regrets. But this is where I respectfully disembark.
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The "people were richer in X decade" discourse often relies on:. 1. The use of advertising images that depict a high-income lifestyle. 2. The testimony of downwardly-mobile Twitter users who don't really get that their parents were rich, not average.
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It is really really weird that it's acceptable practice to write an article about a bill or a court decision or a resolution and then not link to the text of it anywhere. I'm not subtweeting any article in particular. I'm talking about, to a first approximation, *all of them.*.
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Sorry to harp on this but the penguins are the canary in the coal mine. The fact that the penguins were accused of unfair trade practices shows that the whole methodology is fake.
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For the love of God stop calling every cost-benefit analysis or decision you make "science.".
"The science has changed." @DrLeanaWen explains why she supports lifting some pandemic restrictions and thinks the decision to wear a mask should shift from a government mandate to an individual choice.
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2. The penguins are not just tariffed, but accused, baselessly, of being trade manipulators (first circle.). 3. The polar bears of Jan Mayen get to be a tariff loophole island. They get 10 percent (second circle) while their home country of Norway gets 15 percent.
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Land Back Guy who explicitly supports the ethnicities and borders of November 11, 1444 in all cases.
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An instant muteworthy offense:. "Employers want to bring you back into the office to prop up the value of commercial real estate.". If you think your boss wants to raise their rent expense to altruistically help out Cushman & Wakefield or Vornado, you're not worth reading.
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Definitely exactly the sort of thing that you'd do in a country that had only 0.055 new cases per million residents yesterday. Yes sir.
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In all of U.S. history, the cast of "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York" now comprise *half* of all impeachments by the House of Representatives.
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"Run for President" should not be a little button you can press to get a bunch of free publicity with no downsides. I can see why Yang, in particular, holds this view, but sorry, no.
The media hit pieces on Marianne Williamson are out of control.
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Nothing has polarized me more against my natural faction (right-neoliberal pro-tech) than seeing it consumed for a decade by this multilevel marketing nonsense led by its stupidest people.
JUST IN: Tyler Winklevoss says "Can anyone explain why Kamala Harris didn't attend the crypto roundtable yesterday?". "I understand that she's on the campaign trail, but the meeting was virtual. All she needed was an Internet connection." 👀
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Hard to overstate how true this is for men. Mid-30s man walking = nobody cares, except to the extent that you might be a mugger. Mid-30s man with cute baby daughter in stroller = OMG sir you are a pillar of this community. Honored to even exchange a glance with your family.
Walking around with a cute baby is my chance to live like Jon Hamm’s character in 30 Rock — girls are waving to you, people are opening doors for you, and everyone is smiling.
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Ten years ago today, a Theranos employee went to Reddit for help. He didn't name the company, but it was all basically right there in the post. I wonder what secrets are being shared by anonymous accounts today that we will only understand in 2032.
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He's 27 years old and has a 5-year record as an above-average player in a top professional sports league. If this is what can happen to him, imagine how much damage could be done if we pursued a 60% herd immunity strategy.
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It's incredible that Taiwan has done so well against the virus, despite not being part of the WHO. What a handicap! Inspiring they were able to overcome that.
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It’s funny that Zuck is on this long odyssey from very uncool to cool, all while his original flagship product has been on a long odyssey from cool to very uncool.
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I'm trying as hard as I can, and I just can't figure out why Taylor Lorenz is so into Luigi Mangione but not Cody Balmer. If anything, Cody Balmer's motive is much more related to Taylor's own causes and passions. Help me out here.
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As we all know, there are two regions in China:. - The well-organized mainland, which has about 0.05 cases per million, and. - The dopey goofball region of Hong Kong, known for its deep incompetence, which despite being <1% of the population has 20% of the reported active cases.
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At this point Disney should just give the FiveThirtyEight brand back to Nate and apologize for wasting everyone's time.
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Biden working to hold his nomination together: 20 calls in 10 days. (Um. ?). Harris working to consolidate the nomination: 100 calls in 1 day. You can have all the opinions on these people that you want, but one of them just has a much greater capacity to do physical work.
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People on here love to build a cope story in their head about how big consulting firms aren't like this. But no; every actual big-consulting person I know over the age of 35 is pretty much like the big-cake guy and has useful knowledge the corporations don't have in-house.
From the Mr Beast "how to work here" guide. Interesting how this mindset towards consultants is radically different than how Gen X/Boomers see them.
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This is the purest "oh my god he admit it" moment. This poster is the patron saint of keyboard warriors everywhere.
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I have harped on this from time to time since the show came out. But "178th in infant mortality" is just reading the table backwards. Sorry, that's the only explanation. He read the table and thought a high infant mortality number is good. (It is not.).
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Fed shouldn’t have cut.
My best friend is out of town, and she venmoed us $100 to take her dog out for lunch on his 10th adoptaversary.
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This "economists not staying in their lane" problem is really getting out of hand.
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Still can't believe 303 Creative actually made it to SCOTUS. Courts on fiscal issues: "neener neener, nobody has standing about anything, even if it's billions of dollars". Courts on social issues: "why yes I will take this case about the hypothetical thing that makes you mad".
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I. support Elizabeth Warren's point? About how R&D-heavy enterprises generate enormous gains but may be dissuaded from investing if they fear uncertainty or even ex-post expropriation of their resources?. I guess this is the world we live in now. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
You can’t make this up. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is throwing a tantrum over RFK Jr. passing the initial Senate Finance Committee vote, arguing that allowing vaccine manufacturers to be sued is dangerous. “Vaccine manufacturers often operate on very slim profit margins. If they
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You might as well be debating a cat.
“We spent $16 trillion on the lockdowns. We got nothing for it. $8 trillion on the Ukraine war. That’s $24 trillion that they had to print to pay for nothing. That money, the way they’re paying it back, it’s a hidden tax called inflation, and it hits the poor and the middle
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I am in @thedispatch today. Bilateral (country-by-country) trade numbers do not and should not balance. Two of the best examples below.
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I don't think there's a way to say this diplomatically, but I think it's important to tell the truth:. I have zero confidence in the Santa Clara serology study, and the recent work of Eran Bendavid generally.
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As a CEO, you have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value by running your company in a way that annoys @elonmusk, so that he gets fed up and buys their shares at a premium to oust you.
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In 1798, a Mamluk force with antiquated cavalry and virtually untrained peasants challenged Bonaparte at Giza. Hopelessly outgunned, they were massacred and lost thousands of men to Napoleon's 29. That is roughly how I mentally categorize the Taylor Swift boycott people.
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This is such a common self destruct sequence. 1. Pay attention to politics for the first time.2. Notice that liberals lie about some things.3. Brief stint in Bari Weiss-ish land.4. Immediately vault over AEI/Dispatch territory.5. Begin retweeting Catturd and Laura Loomer.
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Advice for young people:. Beware jobs that seem cool. Be open to jobs that seem uncool. I'm not necessarily saying take the money side of the money-fun tradeoff. More like: "fun" jobs all too frequently fail to deliver on the fun, while uncool jobs sometimes have hidden fun.
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Gonna start an account where I trick the "trad revival" people into liking U.S. towns. Eureka Springs, AR and Kennebunkport, ME
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I know I'm supposed to "stay in my lane" but I really feel that if I were given a chance at the wheel there would be a decent chance I could move the ship.
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If you were tasked with making up a story that confirms every stereotype I have about radical leftists, I bet you couldn't do better than this.
Brooklyn man suspended from job by his Jewish dad after ripping posters of Hamas hostages
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If you know anyone who actually can correctly navigate this part of DC/Virginia in a car, they are probably a witch. Sorry, I know that's a tough pill to swallow, but it's the truth.
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@ernietedeschi Oooh that's a good one. I was trying to come up with an example and coming up blank. SimCity was practically a genericized trademark for its type of game and seemed totally untouchable.
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Sheesh there are so many "we will show we are brave and not afraid of the virus" people. It doesn't care about your bravery or whatever. It just wants to repurpose your lungs into a vehicle for reproducing itself, and you should rationally not let it do that. That's it.
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This was a real thing in the late 1990s. People were dead serious about this! Beanie baby value would only ever go up!
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Actually the biggest problem with the whole segment is in this clip. "Wow, goods and services are so cheap here from the perspective of me, a man who earns U.S. dollars.". Yeah this is exactly what Americans always say about countries poorer than Panama, of which Russia is one.
Tucker says after visiting a Russian grocery store he is “radicalized against our leaders” because Russians have it so much better than Americans.
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Lord give me the confidence of a crypto scammer who promotes his pump and dump scheme in the SEC chair’s mentions, addressing him on a first name basis.
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You know, we don't actually need military planes to fly in the baby formula. Believe it or not, we could just simply let foreign producers put the cans in large shipping containers and sell their wares through Walmart and Amazon.
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The US has 42 MW of offshore wind production that is operational, 932 MW under construction, and 18,581(!) MW tied up in permitting.
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Maybe this is a dumb civilian thing to say, but the branches of the military make no sense. "Marines are the maritime land force service branch."."They do amphibious invasions?"."Yeah."."Like D-Day?"."Ha no, that was Army.".". "."Also marines fight in inland Syria sometimes.".
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In New York state, there is a $1 million penalty for administering a life-saving vaccine to people over age 75, those most at risk for the virus that the vaccine would protect them against.
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Eventually you live to see events of your own lifetime retconned. I hear people refer to the 2016 election as if there was an ambient feeling among "The Clever People Like Me" that Democrats were gonna lose. No, shut up, you fraud. The Pennsylvania polling looked like this.
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Here is an instance of the New York Times granting pseudonymity to an ISIS fighter, the courtesy that they would not extend to Scott Alexander.
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Shaping up to be a Year of the Military History Dad at the movies
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Per WSJ, Hassett scheduled a meeting with Navarro on the opposite side of the WH and then Bessent and Lutnick mysteriously knew that was the right time to go stand over Trump and make him roll back the “reciprocal” plan.
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In San Francisco, there is an effort to delay construction on a hospital because the hospital will be big, and some people find that aesthetically displeasing. On the other side of the ledger, hospitals save people's lives. So really, it's an even battle, if you think about it.
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Always, always remember Alan's Law of Expertise. A self-identified expert is much more likely to be legit if their subject is niche, narrow, and unprestigious. "Stardew Valley Any% Speedrun Cheat Detection Expert Here" - Legit. "International Relations Expert Here" - Fraud.
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Boomer opinion incoming:. I want stodgy names for business-to-business software. Your thing should be called something like "Microsoft Office" or "Salesforce CPQ and Billing.". It should not, under any circumstances, be called something like "Wufoo" or "Twilio.".
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I am so sad for the younger poasters who never got to see the Krassensteins in their prime. Brooklyn Dad, or whatever his name is, is just a pale imitation.
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In 20 years the 25-year-olds with big thoughts about politics and American decline are going to insist that these were typical millennial city dwellers in the late 2010s.
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It's very hard to look at this and tell any other story besides the obvious one about the one key local governance decision.
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