China’s system has a potential duality:

Everyone from the top to the bottom plays along when the pie is expanding, and endemic corruption can be treated as a predictable cost of doing business.

However, when the pie stops growing, there isn’t the level of contract assurance that other rich countries offer. The Pareto optimal competition between powerful interests once growth fully stalls will be very interesting to watch. Xi will have his hands full, picking winners and losers, and lots of billionaires and centimillionaires will head for the door, taking significant capital with them. Worse, foreign investment will tail off, and decreased predictability will cause foreign companies to look hard at production in other places. At the bottom of the economic ladder, corruption will be much more apparent and challenging.

Xi’s bet seems to be that he can use technological repression tools to manage discontent in a downturn. We’ll see; he may be right. If the Stasi had had access to Palantir, Israeli spy software, and Chinese hardware, Checkpoint Charlie might still be in place.

Non-zero chance of 9/11 having been caught. Low, but non-zero.

Here’s a mnemonic technique that I have found works: Nothing about Marvel movies is worth remembering.

You’re watching the dramatic equivalent of that retouched Ecce Homo painting, a mass media product constructed by Hollywood on top of the palimpsest of the creative output of young Jewish men trying to come to grips with feelings of powerlessness in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Nothing much of the original remains, and it’s not worth looking at, beyond remarking at its absurdity.

Here in the Valley, Yahoo became known in the ‘00s for ruining acquisitions. In particular, what they did to Flickr was an abomination; it should have become Instagram, but instead Yahoo ran two other photo-sharing services at the same time and let Flickr fester and not really progress.

Considering that almost every public lib continues to use it, there is something to it, even if only the network advantage.

Bullshit. It’s his last name.

Canoe, hard to starboard!

Libs love this behavior. It makes a candidate “electable.”

Finally, someone asks a bedrock question of existence.

FWIW, it’s become an inextricable part of my life. I use it for hours every day, for programming and Linux advice, spreadsheet help, foreign language practice, and random trivia.

Yesterday, I discovered that Snoop Dogg’s -izz speak from the aughts was actually derived from carny pig Latin.

Counterpoint: France is dope.

Also, I want to die by doing a Leaving Las Vegas but, instead of booze, with 7+ meals a day from the Grande Epicerie.

Is this the Sr Grafo guy?