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Created
Sat, 31/12/2022 - 01:00
Twitter offices in disarray.
At Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, where the company has missed rent payments, Mr. Musk has done the same, consolidating workers onto two floors and closing four. He also canceled janitorial services this month, after those workers went on strike for better wages.

That has left the office in disarray. With people packed into more confined spaces, the smell of leftover takeout food and body odor has lingered on the floors, according to four current and former employees. Bathrooms have grown dirty, these people said. And because janitorial services have largely been ended, some workers have resorted to bringing their own rolls of toilet paper from home.
Created
Sat, 31/12/2022 - 01:00
What Russia says about ourselves One of the pleasures of writing for an old-school blog is not being assigned a boring end-of-year review or best-of piece. Plenty of those this week elsewhere. These two reports by BBC News Russia editor Steve Rosenberg are more relective. The first examines how Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has changed Russia. “Special Military Operation” Russia feels different from both communist Russia and independent Russia. “The economy and industry here have been virtually put on a war footing,” says Rosenberg, since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Not every Russian supports the war, Rosenburg finds, but “many Russians do buy into the Kremlin’s alternative reality, according to which in Ukraine Russia is fighting Nazis and NATO and fighting to defend Russia.” It is an eerie window into a culture other than our own in which the person beside you on the tram exists in a separate reality of alternative facts. It is a reminder, and not a comforting one, that in some ways MAGA Republicans, for all their chest-thumping claims to patriotism, are more Russian than American. Some might even agree.
Created
Sat, 31/12/2022 - 00:44
“I fancy that over-confidence seldom does any great harm except when, as, and if, it beguiles its victims into debt.” (Fisher 1933, p. 341) The man who penned those words wrote them from bitter experience. Irving Fisher, who is far better known for the statement that “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently … Continue reading "Margin Debt at Levels Not Seen Since the Peak of the Roaring Twenties Mania—and Falling"
Created
Sat, 31/12/2022 - 00:09

Our 3rd most-read article of the 2022.

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Originally published November 10, 2022.

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I get up at 4:30 a.m. for some pre-dawn food prep. Today, it’s my turn to bring a snack and read a story for my son Ash’s preschool class. The school does not allow nuts, dairy, eggs, sugar, or any pro-oxidant fruit. My snack will be simultaneously nutritious, allergen-free, and appealing to three-year-olds—something like dinosaur-shaped muffins that taste like rainbows but are made of steamed arugula.

While the muffins are baking, Ash wakes up. He is in a great mood after an uninterrupted twelve-hour slumber, eager for another day of joyful learning. He transitions through every part of the morning routine without complaint or delay, and we arrive at school precisely in the middle of the allotted five-minute drop-off window.

Created
Fri, 30/12/2022 - 21:59
How To Relax, Change & Be Free

Jiddu Krishnamurti was a lecturer and teacher for almost 50 years. He was famous, there are a lot of books transcribing his talks, and he maybe got one person enlightened.

Jiddu was the anti-guru, guru. He didn’t want to give concrete instructions, because when people follow concrete instructions they aren’t free: they’ve got a system and they’re just enacting the system.

Reading him is frustrating. I’ve read his lectures multiple times over the years, and each time understood a bit more of what he was saying.

One main point is that everyone is acting according to conditioning: religious, social, family, school, philosophical, etc… They’re in chains, and they regard those changes as themselves.

But none of that conditioning is you. You aren’t your personality, and beliefs you got from you religion, nation, schooling, family, etc… are not your beliefs.

Created
Fri, 30/12/2022 - 20:39
A few days ago, I tooted at Mastodon about a Christmas message I’d had from a Russian friend. I intended my post to convey something hopeful about peace and reconciliation, but got immediate pushback from someone who asked why, if there are are some good Russians, they haven’t stopped the war. Meanwhile, over on Elon’s […]
Created
Fri, 30/12/2022 - 16:45

A trove of intelligence files sent by Canadian peacekeepers expose CIA black ops, illegal weapon shipments, imported jihadist fighters, potential false flags, and stage-managed atrocities. The established mythos of the Bosnian War is that Serb separatists, encouraged and directed by Slobodan Milošević and his acolytes in Belgrade, sought to forcibly seize Croat and Bosniak territory in service of creating an irredentist “Greater Serbia.” Every step of the way, they purged indigenous Muslims in a concerted, deliberate genocide, while refusing to […]

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