“Low-key” as in he’s found a relatively low-key way to defy a judge’s order. Any kind of defying a judge’s order is of course a very dramatic action.

I know that’s what drives me crazy too. As opposed to a lot of harmful conservative policies that are clearly motivated by a desire to look out for the interests of the wealthy or pander to xenophobes, the anti-vaxx stuff is just pure contagious madness.

The platform is the users but it’s also the owners. Twitter got a lot worse when Musk took over and started turning it into a Nazi propaganda platform even though the userbase didn’t immediately change.

Huh? No crypto connection at bluesky.

Yes, but they don’t even mention the yearly target in the article, just broadly allude to inflation not being an issue anymore, even though it has actively driven prices up significantly for pretty much everything for the last few years. It is absolutely a pain point that is often glossed over when talking about the economy, usually when commenting how good it is.

I’m not sure what to make of this complaint. Yes the article assumes some basic level of understanding of what these terms mean. We had a bout of inflation, meaning prices rose quickly, and then it ended and prices are back to their usual flat or slow increase rate of change.

As for the job market, I’m in tech. It’s insanely hard to get a job right now, as most places simply aren’t hiring (or worse, put up job ads but have no plan to fill them, as insane as that is). Wages have stagnated for sure, and housing has gone up in price. I haven’t actually seen many high wage growth for a lot of stuff around me either, mostly just adjusting lower end wages so that people can (mostly) afford rent. 2% inflation is better than the last couple of years, but the article linked completely downplayed all of those factors. Which is why I said it was bullshit.

Ah well there’s your issue right there - tech in particular is not doing so hot right now, but most other parts of the economy are doing great. Got to look at the data on the big picture and not just what you see in your own little niche.

Huh? Yes 2% is the usual inflation target, so getting it down to that level constitutes defeating inflation. We wouldn’t really want it to go any lower, much less so low that it turns into the deflation it would take to reverse the price increases of the high inflation era as you seem to be arguing for.

Not sure what you’re getting at with the job market either - we have low unemployment and high wage growth, that’s about as good as job markets get.

That somewhat unnecessary influx of money is what allowed prices to jump, but it’s also interesting that our rate of inflation was persistently lower than many other developed nations, so it may not have been totally unnecessary.

Isn’t America’s low inflation relative to countries that intervened less the proof that the influx of money was not that cause of inflation? Not so much that spending the extra money actively reduced inflation, but it just turned out to not be a major factor. Meanwhile the extra spending was hugely important for keeping the American economy growing, while underspending held back many other countries.

Yeah even if you are pro-copyright as a way to encourage artistic creation there is no justification for how insanely long works stay under copyright. Or for banning free filesharing of copyrighted works.

Well in theory the idea is that it encourages people to create more by making doing so more lucrative. May have even made some sense back in the era before digitization.

Thanks. Alternatively with the NY Mag you can just paste the link into a private browser window and read unlimited articles - just make sure to close and then open a new private window for each one.

Like you want the guest list in the title?

I’m a huge fan of both his novels and his blogging.

Hard to imagine how anyone who’s concerned about climate change could see shutting down a carbon-free energy source as a “green win”.

No the American and Chinese government ones that have launched so far are both robotic. This Dream Chaser one that’s supposed to test this year is manned though, we’ll see how that goes.

Well yes mooooooar economic growth has always been an incredibly positive thing for humanity and space based growth would be no different.

That analogy makes nonsense of your description of humanity metastasizing into space though - the equivalent being a cancer expanding and gathering resources from outside of the body it’s embedded in? If anything it’s the obvious solution to the problem of our putting too much strain on Earth’s ecosystem - let us spread that strain to other worlds where there’s no ecosystem to damage.

Yeesh sounds like you are down on humanity generally, referring to the growth of our civilization as “metastasizing” like it’s a cancer. I don’t expect that expanding into space will solve any big metaphysical problems or anything, but you shouldn’t turn your nose up so quickly at the benefits of growth. The first space settlements beyond little research outposts probably will be some kind of resource extraction, since any human settlement needs to be economically viable and that’s what they’ve got up there. I’d be very happy to make the world a lot richer with cheap raw materials while reducing the need for environmentally damaging mining on Earth where there’s an environment to damage.