first thought when openai rolled out these new agents: we’re replaying the 1880 railroad wars. whoever lays the digital rails sets the timetable and the tolls, deciding which towns (e.g. startups, apis, whole industries) get a stop or get starved. ai agents are the

The hosts of Israel’s “Two Nice Jewish Boys” podcast emphasize that their fellow Jewish Israelis enjoy seeing people in Gaza suffer, and that it makes their daily lives more satisfying to know Palestinians are hungry and homeless

Derek Thompson First of all, there does not have to be “oligopoly” with the power to raise prices in order for consolidation to yield reductions in output through explicit or tacit coordination between the largest firms. In any event, my argument was also that three *other* factors —

.Zohran Kwame Mamdani has a nice bit on the difference between universal and means-tested programs here:

GET ITTTTT maybe I will raise my kids in NYC after all

Can you tell us how he died, where, and why?

Publicly-owned financial institutions are key to solving society's biggest problems.

You could have saved the lives of TENS OF THOUSANDS OF CHILDREN if you had adopted this position when you had the power to implement it

The Democrats have a Democrat problem.

Months ago, I saw a slide deck that promised to "fundamentally transform" #Gaza into a manufacturing and tourism hub "at the crossroads" of a new trade corridor linking #Israel to the Gulf. It showed AI-powered cities and electric vehicles, if someone cleared the debris.

The success of finance should be measured by how small a share of gdp it requires to support the real economy effectively. It's success isn't a thing in and of itself, only in relation to what it facilitates. I obviously can't say if Chinese finance is effective, but ours isn't.

A great article in Prospect on why privatization of water companies in the UK under Thatcher lead to 1) horrible outcomes for citizens, 2) horrible outcomes for the environment and 3) record profits for mostly foreign owners of the water companies. Funny how that happens,

We have an economy that allows the financial sector to earn profits without investment in productive capacities. On 'The Rest is Money' with @peston and @stephlunch, discussing why obsessing over fiscal "black holes" misses the point. The real question isn't how much government

There's hardly a single avenue in this society to do productive work that isn't in service of the profits of the extremely wealthy. Even most small businesses are in the same boat. The public sector no longer provides any alternative to this and we're all suffering for it.