Step 1: Fill the carton with less juice.
Step 2: Make the packaging smaller and say "new packaging but still as much juice as before."

Friendly reminder: Tim Hortons hasn't been Canadian-owned since 1995

So true. As others have remarked on here, entshittification really changes the calculus of "is piracy worth it?"

Great article. Nice to see an economist doing such important work. I don't really understand finances. I snipped the parts of the article that helped me understand the finding/headling. There's a great chart in the article of taxation differences since the 1960s too - staggering! Plutocracy in action!

Published in The New York Times with the headline "It's Time to Tax the Billionaires," Zucman's analysis notes that billionaires pay so little in taxes relative to their vast fortunes because they "live off their wealth"—mostly in the form of stock holdings—rather than wages and salaries.

Stock gains aren't currently taxed in the U.S. until the underlying asset is sold, leaving billionaires like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk—a pair frequently competing to be the single richest man on the planet—with very little taxable income.

"But they can still make eye-popping purchases by borrowing against their assets," Zucman noted. "Mr. Musk, for example, used his shares in Tesla as collateral to rustle up around $13 billion in tax-free loans to put toward his acquisition of Twitter."

Shrinkflation noobs. Never specify the size of a (pseudo-)prepared product. It's better to use abstract terms like large, extra large, and jumbo that can be shrunk down in size without increasing legal liability down whenever you wish to juice your profits a bit (/s)

Definitely not genocide /s

Defunding biodiversity science at a time like this...

In the fall, Jezebel reported how a bipartisan bill ostensibly meant to protect children from harmful content online could be weaponized by Republican politicians to censor everything from LGBTQ+ content to sex ed info to abortion resources—and for all internet users, not just children.

This is so dystopian

Quotes from UFC champ Sean Strickland at media day 😳:

Misogyny:

Take Wednesday’s pre-fight media day, for example. Strickland showed up in a T-shirt that read: “A woman in every kitchen, a gun in every hand.” You know, just in case we were in danger of forgetting that this is the same fighter who has repeatedly insisted that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote or hold jobs.

Homophobia:

When Lee replied that he’d have no problem with having a gay son, Strickland replied: “Well, you’re a weak fucking man, dude. You’re part of the fucking problem. You elected Justin Trudeau, and he seized the bank accounts. You’re just fucking pathetic. And the fact that you have no fucking backbone, and have him shut down your country and seize fucking bank accounts, and you ask me some stupid shit like that? Go fuck yourself.”

Transphobia:

“Here’s the thing about Bud Light,” Strickland said. “Ten years ago, to be trans was a mental fucking illness. And all of a sudden, people like you have fucking weaselled your way in the world. You are an infection. You are the definition of weakness. Everything that is wrong with the world is because of fucking you. And the best thing is, the world’s not buying it. The world’s not buying your fucking bullshit that you’re fucking peddling. The world is not saying, ‘you know what, you’re right, chicks have dicks.’ The world’s not saying that. The world’s saying, ‘there are two genders, I don’t want my kids being taught about who they can fuck in school, I don’t want my kids being taught about their sexual preference.’ Like, this guy [gesturing to Lee] is a fucking enemy. You want to look at the enemy to our world? It’s that motherfucker right there. Asking me stupid fucking questions.”

Wow, this is impressive journalism. The war on truth and efforts to sanitize genocide over the last few months have been incredibly troubling to see. The article has some great graphs! I think I'll start subscribing to Breach this year!

Also - and I'm only familiar with the 1971 film version with Gene Wilder - Grandpa Joe is clearly the only friend, companion, and available adult in Charlie's life who he can talk to. His mother is too busy from working to support the family. He doesn't have friends or money to spend. And Grandpa Joe does show some guilt and awareness about not contributing more to the family. He has that great line when Charlie tries to give him a nickel for tobacco: "When a loaf of bread looks like a banquet, I've no right buying tobacco."

Removing downvoting feels intuitively wrong to me (eg, I believe that dissent is a really important part of a healthy democracy). If all those mega-corp platforms are removing downvoting, then I'm pretty confident my intuition on this matter is correct