Dan McFadden

Communications professional, writer, sailor, and clean-water advocate. The views expressed here are solely my own.

[NYTPitchbot @DougJBalloon]

Too busy to visit DC? This garlicky slow-cooker algae will make you feel like you're at the Lincoln Memorial.

[Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom]

When I was struggling through grad school, I landed a job at a small ethnic (Greek-American) paper in Boston, and the publisher dropped some books on my desk as my "training" said: Read these.
Zinsser was one of them and it was the best advice he ever gave me.

[derek guy @dieworkwear]

No, I don't think the average US consumer will pay 150% more for MiUSA goods. A few things:

First, consumers are practical. They will not pay more just because something was made in the US, but they may pay more if the upcharge comes with an increase in quality. There's no reason to believe that MiUSA clothing is inherently better than clothing made abroad. In fact, sometimes it's worse.

Second, you can look around you. Look at the vociferous MAGA influencers who criticize corporations for offshoring their manufacturing, while at the same time getting their merch made abroad. They could get their merch made right here in the US from fiber to finish — it literally only takes a few clicks of a button — but they won't. I know because I've offered my services to help them reshore their manufacturing, and not a single one has accepted.

Third, look at consumers. Consumers don't want to pay a lot of money for clothes because Western society has long discounted the cultural significance of clothing. Fashion is commonly considered too vain, too mercantile, and too superficial. Just look at how many people loudly posture about how much they either dislike or don't care about clothes. This is a form of virtue signaling to show that you're smarter and more substantive than other people. Thus, it's unreasonable to expect this sort of person to pay a lot of money for clothes — they take pride in not valuing them.

If you want to reinvigorate US garment manufacturing, you can't envision a future in which thousands of Americans make crappy t-shirts and jeans that eventually retail for $25 and $75, with such items sold to US consumers who are likely to be bitter about having fewer options and higher prices. This is not a sensible strategy for either employment or wage growth, as those jobs will eventually be replaced by robots anyway.

IMO, you'd be better off moving upstream into luxury goods and exporting them to the global market. Just as the average Italian doesn't wear luxury Italian suits and the average French person doesn't carry saddle-stitched bags, you don't have to count on Americans wearing Alden shoes and Rochester Tailored Clothing suits. Instead, you can access the larger global market.

This strategy protects the worker. We already live in a world where a machine can pad-stitch a suit. Whether this industrially produced garment is up to snuff to benchmade tailoring is up for debate, but no one can argue that the average consumer can tell the difference between machine and handwork. Yet, those who have the means are willing to pay for the handwork. Why? Because at that tier of clothing, handwork adds a sense of romance — human labor adds something that a machine can never replace. This higher-skilled work also comes with higher wage growth. The US doesn't have an employment problem; it has a wage growth problem.

Instead of erecting tariffs that increase the cost of European leathers, British and Italian wools, and Mongolian cashmere (inputs we need to make high-quality clothes), you can tax the rich and use the money to train Americans in crafts-based, high-end luxury sectors. Then you can export these goods to the global market. But doing so requires government spending (in training and education), lower trade barriers (so you can access other markets and get cheaper inputs), and improved relationships with other countries (such as not insulting Canadians, prompting them to boycott our goods).

The primary MiUSA customer has always been a fashion customer, not someone buying something out of patriotism. I'm reminded of an interview I did long ago with someone who owned a custom button-up shirt company. He had his shirt manufactured at the Garland factory in North Carolina, which is now unfortunately closed. He recalled standing on the factory floor and watching his shirts roll off the same assembly line as some of Thom Browne's Brooks Brothers Black Fleece shirts, which retailed for about twice his prices. His company primarily served people who said they "love" supporting US manufacturing, but behind the scenes, they were often complainers, time wasters, and people with a high return rate. Meanwhile, the fashion customer thinks nothing of spending $300 for a button-up shirt because it has a fashionable label on it. This is the kind of customer you want to pursue, not the supposed "patriots."

The strategy was always doomed from the start because the most vociferous proponents hold all three positions at once:

— wants to virtue signal about supporting US manufacturing
— is against increasing the minimum wage
— buys foreign imports because they're cheap and see thrift as a moral virtue

[Ed Zitron @edzitron]

Really grateful that @chrislhayes and @MSNOWNews gave me the space to talk about the unsustainable economics of AI, subsidized subscriptions, and why generative AI is nothing like Uber or Amazon Web Services.

[Nature is Amazing ☘️ @AMAZlNGNATURE]

Birds in Ukraine use drone fiber-optic cables to build nests

It's a sad sight, but also a reminder that life finds a way, as birds adapt by using the remnants of war to build their homes

[Ed Zitron @edzitron]

Free newsletter: The dawn of token-based billing has shown that generative AI doesn’t have a return on investment. It's too unpredictable, too unreliable, you can't easily measure the cost of tasks, and organizations are already pulling back.
https://t.co/wmI82zWdcq

[Garrett @GarrettQuinn]

Nick Bilton trying to Big J Journalist Scott Pelley is genuinely hilarious.

[Defense News @defense_news]

Seoul plans to launch its first boat in the mid-2030s and commission it in “the late 2030s,” the government proclaimed. https://t.co/5axCNctATP

[USNI News @USNINews]

U.S. Will Sell 3 In-service Virginia Subs to Australia Instead of 1 New, 2 In-service — USNI News
https://t.co/w8S66yUbfh

[Sir Escanor (𝘏𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘶𝘮 𝘚𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘦𝘳) @EscanorReloaded]

CEOs are quietly realizing the AI replacement plan has a problem.
Two problems, actually.

One: the token costs for running AI agents are now exceeding what they were paying the employees they fired.

Two: when the tokens run out, the AI stops. Just stops. No continuity. No workaround. Just a spinning wheel where your workforce used to be.

You fired humans to save money and bought a subscription that bills you into a corner.

The employees you let go knew what to do when things broke.
The AI just invoices you for the outage.

And then there’s the permission problem nobody wants to talk about.

To do its job, the AI agent needs access. Full access. Your systems, your patents, your contracts, your future plans. Everything you spent years building, handed over to a process that has no loyalty, no discretion, and no skin in the game.

You didn’t hire a replacement.
You gave a stranger with no soul the keys to everything you own.

Enjoy.

[Jack Shafer @jackshafer]

"The American Prospect decided to do away with programmatic ads. A month later, people are spending nearly twice as much time on the site." @cjr https://t.co/cAJbd7DjdP

[Defense News @defense_news]

Enlisted Marines with Hornet specialties will be offered retraining, reassignment or career dead ends. https://t.co/M9yiaxLGsw

[Anthony Capaccio @ACapaccio]

The post-Phelan piling on is full swing. The $17b mark for the first ship is way low, as those of us who cover ship costs, like USNI/CBO/CRS, know. The lead ship is always way,way over target:
The Trump-class battleships are a waste of time and money

https://t.co/KGO1vmyRvx

[Kerry Kennedy @KerryKennedyRFK]

Are you alive today? If you didn’t die from COVID, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, SARS, swine flu, anthrax, tuberculosis, malaria, or other diarrheal diseases, you have the great Dr. Tony Fauci to thank.

[Merriam-Webster @MerriamWebster]

Everybody wants to rule the words.

[Mark Pazniokas @CTMirrorPaz]

Erin Stewart, GOP candidate for governor, walks back startling bribery claim made on WTNH, says only offer of cash came from little old ladies trying to pay taxes. https://t.co/L0Qo8FDDcd

[Ron Fournier @ron_fournier]

Journalists: Trump mocks you, sues you, and targets you for prosecution. He calls the truths you’ve dedicated your lives to reporting “fake news” and orders devastating budget cuts to your colleagues at NPR, PBS and VOA. AND YET YOU INVITE HIM TO DINNER? https://t.co/I6TJtTxKPA

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

“It’s difficult to cover him in a way that conveys how unhinged he is. Journalists are trained to be like, ‘OK, what did he say that was newsworthy?’ So you convey that to your audience. But in reality, when you actually watch, you see he's full of hatred, lying constantly, and very incoherent.” https://t.co/rRGLnEtiOx

[Trip Gabriel @tripgabriel]

The SAVE Act requires documentary proof of citizenship to register, principally a passport or birth certificate.

States with the lowest share of passport holders are red states: KY, WV, MS, AL, AR, LA, OK, SC, IN

https://t.co/gkAU1zLwQ9

[Yoni Appelbaum @YAppelbaum]

Albuquerque turned a wall of its airport bookshop over to its local university press, and goddamn, now I want this in every airport.