Lisa E. Smith, M.A. 👩‍🎓

artvark. ballerina. connoisseur of gardens and libraries. pen(cil)s. forever haunted by Venetian ghosts.

[Lisa E. Smith, M.A. 👩‍🎓 @LisaTheSmith]

I relaxed yesterday and it did NOT suit me.

[Mike Drucker @MikeDrucker]

@CantEverDie “If there was a problem and it was fixed, then that problem must’ve never existed at all and therefore it wasn’t worth putting effort into fixing” mindset is melting society

[Rich Mintz @richmintz]

Why are outsiders like this so wedded to their wrong views

There are 1000s of multimillionaires in my random neighborhood of Manhattan, they’re called “people over 40 who own a reasonably nice 1BR apt or any 2BR and have a healthy 401K,” and yes most of them take the subway

[Lisa E. Smith, M.A. 👩‍🎓 @LisaTheSmith]

Honestly only native New Yorkers would have a conversation this dumb, one that could and does apply exactly the same way to every place on earth, as if it’s uniquely about them or uniquely defined as it relates to New York.

[Justin Sherin @wychstreet]

You never saw ‘you have to be born in NY to be a NYer’ until the last 15-20 years bc people used to come to NY to be NYers. Fran Lebowitz & Nan Goldin are from Baltimore, Debbie Harry from NJ.. Pakistani cabbies can be more Bklyn than Bklyn. Now the West Village is like Ann Arbor

[Lisa E. Smith, M.A. 👩‍🎓 @LisaTheSmith]

It’s not boats, every single thing rich people own is like this. It’s also not secret - if you google any of these boats it will tell you exactly who the actual rich person who owns it is despite one of their companies being the owner on paper.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Almost none of the boats in that photo are owned by a person. Each one belongs to a company that exists only to hold the boat, registered on a tiny island, with a stranger’s name on the paperwork. That is how you keep a 300-foot yacht in public and your own name out of it.

This is completely legal, and it is the normal way these boats are owned. Once a yacht passes about 100 feet, it is almost always wrapped inside one of these companies. The boat is easy to see. Tracing it back to the person who paid for it is the hard part, and that is the whole point.

When someone says these owners are not on any rich list, they are right, and the reason is dull. Forbes only ranks money it can prove. Their 2026 list has a record 3,428 billionaires worth $20.1 trillion between them, and an army of reporters digs through company filings, court records, and leaks to pin down every number. But a fortune tucked away the way these boats are cannot be proven, so it never reaches the page. As far as the rankings know, that fortune does not exist.

The owners do stay hidden. The money itself, though, has been counted, down to a number. A Berkeley economist named Gabriel Zucman worked out a neat trick: money in hiding leaves a gap in a country’s books, like a missing puzzle piece, and you can measure that gap. Using his method, the charity Oxfam reported this April that $13.25 trillion is sitting offshore, in accounts overseas built for secrecy. That is more than the whole world economy makes in a month. Around $3.55 trillion of it never gets taxed at all, more than the entire economy of France. The very richest people, about one in a thousand, hold roughly 80 percent of that untaxed pile. On its own, it is worth more than everything owned by the poorer half of the planet, all 4.1 billion of them.

For one weekend a year, all of that floats into a single harbor. As of early June, trackers counted 106 yachts packed inside Monaco’s main port and another 180 anchored just off the coast for the Grand Prix. One of them, a 400-foot giant called Kismet, costs 3 million euros a week just to rent.

Europe actually tried to lift the lid on who owns what. In 2018 it forced member countries to publish a public list of the real people behind each company, and reporters quickly began naming owners who had stayed out of sight. Then in November 2022 the EU’s top court closed that public access again, ruling it invaded the owners’ privacy. The lists still exist. Now you need a special reason and official permission to look.

The money is no great mystery, and the pool it sits in has been measured down to the trillion. The only thing still missing is a name to put on each boat.

[Moira Donegan @MoiraDonegan]

Crazy how I am both morally and intellectually superior to everyone who has ever done that.

[no earthquake (ear flu victim) @no_earthquake]

LLMs have convincingly demonstrated that coding is the easiest activity, maths is medium hard, and having taste is the hardest

[Lisa E. Smith, M.A. 👩‍🎓 @LisaTheSmith]

We should have seen what was coming when people started saying “it’s not that deep” all the time, because that statement indicates a person has no humanities education whatsoever and zero power or analytical thinking

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

It’s worth noting that Louisiana & Mississippi ditched whole-language learning during the pandemic and returned to phonics. Those states now have some of the HIGHEST child literacy rates in the nation (google “the Mississippi Miracle”). It’s time to revive phonics nationwide.

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

In the early 2000s, schools foolishly replaced phonics instruction (which is very effective at teaching kids to read) with something called “whole-language learning” (which is not). This method encourages kids to “guess” a word based on the first letters. It has been a disaster.

[Lisa E. Smith, M.A. 👩‍🎓 @LisaTheSmith]

@librarythingtim Cool! Definitely still heavily weighted to New York but also to the whole northeast. And all of the other big population states (TX, CA, FL) ended up below average - only IL remained

[Lisa E. Smith, M.A. 👩‍🎓 @LisaTheSmith]

@librarythingtim I think this would need to be adjusted for state population size (ie authors per 100k residents in the state) to really make any sense. I don’t the imbalance would be as striking since so many large-area states have small population sizes.

[Lisa E. Smith, M.A. 👩‍🎓 @LisaTheSmith]

@MarianneValen20 @SketchesbyBoze I came here to say the same - now I think people know what baguettes are but I don’t expect ANYONE to have that kind of linguistic acumen.

[Robert Francis @rbfrncs]

One thing I love about new york is that its most important birds get obituaries

[Lisa E. Smith, M.A. 👩‍🎓 @LisaTheSmith]

@librarythingtim So… do we think he will have figured out how to say “2 Chronicles 7:11–22” using English words before then, or will they be spelling it out on his teleprompter?

[Lisa E. Smith, M.A. 👩‍🎓 @LisaTheSmith]

@strandedinNI @dieworkwear Imagine hearing that the manufacturer-provided measuring cup tells you to use too much detergent and thinking the manufacturers made the pods just the right size 😂

[just matt @questionableway]

depaul coming up with $42 million for their new basketball facilities and then immediately proceeding to close their art museum and student theater is a pretty scathing indictment of the institution and also society as a whole

[Lisa E. Smith, M.A. 👩‍🎓 @LisaTheSmith]

How exactly could one consider Kamala Harris as anything other than defeated publicly and resoundingly?

[Amar Shergill Californiawala @AmarShergillCA]

I actually want Harris to run. She needs to be defeated publicly and resoundingly as a message to others that might imitate her politics. Plus, she divides the amoral centrist vote, and that's a good thing for any actual progressive candidate.

[Gillian Branstetter @GBBranstetter]

Critical opportunity right now to solidify this point in the minds of voters. Trump said your life would be easier if he ruined the lives of immigrants and trans people, which he is obsessively doing. Is it putting money in your pocket? Is it improving your life in any way?

[BONESAW 🕊️ @BonesawMD]

Insane how you can just read the books and writings from the greatest minds to have ever graced this earth. In all of human history it has never been easier to do this. Still, most people will never even bother.

[Lisa E. Smith, M.A. 👩‍🎓 @LisaTheSmith]

The most hilarious example to use trying to double down on this

[Leading Report @LeadingReport]

Fox News’ Sean Hannity wonders if Pope Leo XIV has “even read the Bible” in response to his anti-conflict stance.

“Has he ever heard of David and Goliath?”