- by Timothy Andersen
Reading
- by Kennon Sheldon
Perfect competition idealizes the very small firm, its growth constrained by rising AVC [Average Variable Cost] as it expands output. But why does AVC rise? And why does it rise to such an extent that it outweighs declining AFC [Average Fixed Cost], resulting in the U-shaped cost curve? Current textbooks do not supply an explanation. […]
Johnson’s lack of candour might look like a personal phenomenon, but it was something which pervaded his government. This had grievous consequences. As our recent report details, lack of transparency and accountability pervaded his government’s approach to the pandemic. It is demonstrated through the use of technologies which could be employed as population-level surveillance, with […]
DEI programs are being cut at colleges.
I guess it's time to clear out some of these books.
In Covid news:
1) CO2 levels below 540 are sufficient to stop exponential Covid spread.
2) The European Mortality Project will start using death numbers from 2020-2022 and late when calculating excess mortality. Meaning that they will make “people who died due to Covid or Covid related mortality” just part of the normal. An out of control pandemic is normal now.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released of the latest labour force data today (June 15, 2023) – Labour Force, Australia – for May 2023. The May result reverses two consecutive months of weaker results from the Labour Force survey. Employment rose by 75.9 thousand (a strong monthly result), participation rose by 0.1 point to…
I know, I know …
More and more people want to keep it legal The intensity around the abortion issue is actually growing. Gallup posted this: -A record-high 69% say abortion should generally be legal in the first three months of pregnancy. The prior high of 67% was recorded last May after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization draft was leaked, showing that the court planned to nullify constitutional protection for abortion. -Most Americans oppose abortion later in pregnancy, but the 37% saying it should be legal in the second three months of pregnancy and 22% in the last three months of pregnancy are the highest Gallup has found in trends since 1996. -Gallup’s oldest trend on the legality of abortion finds 34% of Americans believe abortion should be legal under any circumstances, nearly matching last year’s record-high 35% and above the 27% average since 1975. Another 51% currently say abortion should be legal under certain circumstances, while 13% (similar to the all-time low of 12%) want it illegal in all circumstances. -Fifty-two percent of Americans say abortion is morally acceptable, matching last year’s all-time high.
Right? If you think this isn’t an assault on democracy and our system of government you would be wrong: Florida GOP governor Ron DeSantis has plans to tear down and rebuild the Department of Justice and the FBI, even removing large parts of them and relocating FBI headquarters out of Washington D.C. DeSantis has stated he will replace much of the personnel at the DOJ and its subsidiaries, and implement a “disciplined” and “relentless” strategy so the Justice Department resembles what the “Founding Fathers envisioned.” . . . “We’ve seen throughout this country that the DOJ and the FBI are controlled by one faction of our society,” DeSantis said, noting that the federal agencies were “going after pro-life activists,” investigating parents at school board meetings “who are concerned about things like critical race theory and forcing kids to wear masks,” and “colluding with tech companies to censor information such as what they did with the 2020 election.” Reps.
Niche news network Sky News Australia has applauded the Peter Dutton led Opposition for using leaked evidence from a criminal trial to target an alleged victim of sexual assault and those that may have helped them. ”Brilliant move, Mr Dutton,... Read More ›
From Ed Whelen on twitter: In today’s WSJ, Judicial Watch’s Michael Bekesha claims that Presidential Records Act gives an outgoing president complete authority to “decide what records to return and what records to keep at the end of his presidency.” Bizarro World account of PRA. Bekesha makes wild wrong turn in his very first sentence. Indictment is *not* predicated in any way on PRA. As Andrew McCarthy explains here classified docs Trump retained were *agency records* outside scope of PRA. Frivolous Trump Argument No. 1: Classified Intelligence Reports Compiled by Government Agencies Are ‘Personal Records’ under the Presidential Records Act | National ReviewAgency intelligence records are not even presidential records under the PRA, much less a president’s personal records. @mentionsPRA’s definition of “presidential records” excludes “agency records” from their scope. That of course doesn’t make them “personal records.” It instead means that PRA doesn’t govern them at all.
Noam Chomsky on Language, Left Libertarianism, and Progress (Ep. 182) Noam Chomsky Interviewed on Conversations with Tyler June 14, 2023. Conversations with Tyler. Noam Chomsky joins Tyler to discuss why Noam and Wilhelm von Humboldt have similar views on language and liberty, good and bad evolutionary approaches to language, what he thinks Stephen Wolfram gets wrong about […]
It’s a shame that we can’t even have audio recordings of the legal proceedings against Donald Trump since the events are of great political and historical importance but it does not appear that is going to be. So it will be up to media in the courtrooms to tell us what happened. I heard lots of bits and pieces yesterday but didn’t really have a sense of how it actually unfolded. This from Anna Bower at Lawfare is most straightforward narration of the arraignment yesterday that I’ve come across. (She waited in line for 27 hours to get in!) When I finally enter courtroom 13-3, 27 hours later, Trump is already seated at a table on the right-hand side of the room. Overhead, a warm white light appears to shine directly on the former president, casting his orange-blonde hair in a golden hue. He is, both literally and metaphorically, in the limelight. Yet it strikes me that Trump—the man who positioned bigness as a central issue of American politics (“hugely,” “bigly,” “little Marco”)—looks unmistakably small. The courtroom is large, almost cavernous, adorned with slabs of creamy marble and caramel wood.
The statistical evidence clearly shows that China is the world’s number one economy. Unfortunately, the US and many commentators are unwilling to acknowledge that reality, but the future stability of the region depends on acceptance that we are living in a multipolar world. For the last hundred years America has been the world’s biggest economy, Continue reading »
As the new Australian Labor government took power following the 2022 election, its China policy barely changed and the “China threat” narrative continued unabated. I did not vote for the Labor party to see Australia’s government channelling the ousted Morrison Government! The very worst outcome for Australia would be to engage in a war against Continue reading »
One MIT-trained poet spent nine months trying to find out.
The post Does Dream Inception Work? appeared first on Nautilus.
It is a sad fact that the White staff who take jobs in remote Aboriginal communities tend to socialise together after work, thus maintaining a clear social distance from the people they are working for, or working with, or working among. Close and trusting relationships between the locals and the strangers — teachers, health workers, Continue reading »
Mass surveillance and manipulation should not be allowed to become the new normal. The Robodebt controversy directly affected more than 470,000 people, some of whom reputedly took their lives as a result of the harassment they received to repay debts to the Australian Government that they never incurred. The policy, which was first implemented under Continue reading »