Marshall

[katsu @katsuxbt]

Pacman Jones says he committed to Georgia Tech, then pulled out after hearing they’d have to go to class every day and do homework

“I was committed to Georgia Tech. I had offers from everywhere: Georgia, Notre Dame, NC State, Tennessee, Miami, Florida. I could have went anywhere besides Michigan and Ohio State.”

“First I wanted to stay home, then my grandma got sick with cancer and I was like, I got to get away from here… My boy who went to high school with me went to Georgia Tech, and he was like, ‘bro, this school hard as hell, we got to go to class every day.’ I said, y’all doing all the work? That one’s off the list.”

“Then I went on the visit to West Virginia, we wasn’t doing no work. Work was football.”

[Abundance Institute @abundanceinst]

AI tools are saving lives.

"EchoNext found evidence of possible severe heart damage in Mr. Quiros’s electrocardiogram. The team called him back to the hospital one week later for an echocardiogram, a scan that shows the beating heart. What they found was dire. His heart was beating so feebly that just 10 percent of its blood was pumped out with each contraction."
@nytimes

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

This is a fantastic article about @Tesla's FSD by The Detroit News:

"Determined to maintain their individual transportation independence, they are using Tesla’s hands-free FSD system as a driver assist. Though by no means exclusive to seniors in its ability to add another set of eyes to the road, FSD helps elderly drivers maintain a cocoon around their car as their confidence in reflexes and eyesight naturally deteriorate.

92-year-old Leonard Kraus uses Tesla FSD (Supervised) for 87% of his miles. He recommended Tesla FSD to his 95-year-old brother-in-law. “I don't think I would be driving without it.”

“It's as good a driver as I am,” said Dick Amacher, 78, a retired General Motors engineer from Rochester Hills who drives his Model Y and Model 3 on FSD 98% of the time. “Here's the thing, it will not go through a red light. It will not go through a stop sign. Every once in a while, I've driven through neighborhoods where stop signs were partially obscured by low hanging branches, for example. . . and (the Tesla) sees them before I do.”

Driving into Detroit, FSD exited the expressway near Wayne State. “All of a sudden the Tesla pulls over to the curb. I'm like: ‘what is going on?’” said the 78-year old. “Turns out there was an emergency vehicle coming from behind. FSD saw that it was an emergency vehicle before I did. It has vision in every direction simultaneously. A human being cannot replicate that.”

Full article: https://t.co/bn099dJ8li

[Alex Armlovich @aarmlovi]

Similarly, most "heritage Italian foods" came from the New World or were invented recently (e.g. tiramisu, carbonara, carpaccio were all invented in living memory)

[Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 @JessicaBRiedl]

Remember PAYGO? This 1990 law mandated that all tax cuts & mandatory spending expansions that are not paid for would trigger automatic, equal spending cuts.

How many times has PAYGO been enforced since 1990? ZERO. Both parties voted to cancel every enforcement of the law. Ever.

[Chris Freiman @cafreiman]

A reminder that the middle class is shrinking because many people are getting too rich to remain middle class

[Italian Sons and Daughters of America @OrderISDA]

On 7/2/1776, Caesar Rodney rode 80 miles from Dover to Philly in a race against time. Arriving as the vote for independence was underway, he cast the tie-breaking ballot that secured Delaware’s support for separation from Great Britain, leading to the Declaration of Independence.

[Jeremy Horpedahl 🥚📉 @jmhorp]

Happy 250th!!!

https://t.co/aE16votJX1

[Jason Crawford @jasoncrawford]

Jefferson in 1826 (declining, for health reasons, an invitation to an America's 50th celebration):

“I should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exchanged there congratulations personally with the small band, the remnant of that host of worthies, who joined with us on that day, in the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our country, between submission or the sword; and to have enjoyed with them the consolatory fact, that our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity, continue to approve the choice we made.

“May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings & security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion.

“All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god.

“These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.”

[Perry E. Metzger @perrymetzger]

In the 1960s through 1970s, huge numbers of buildings in New York City were abandoned, because their owners could not make enough money to cover the expense of providing apartments to their tenants, could not legally get rid of their tenants so long as the building stood, and could not sell their buildings because no one wanted an “asset” that permanently lost money month after month. The only non-destructive recourse that they had available was to disappear, and so thousands of buildings eventually had their landlords vanish. A relatively small number of landlords hired arsonists to burn their buildings to the ground, because the destruction of the building was literally the only means by which a lease could be broken, leaving them at least with a vacant lot that didn’t cost them money. Large chunks of the city started to resemble a warzone.

[SportsCenter @SportsCenter]

Edward Norton talking to himself at the USA-Türkiye game 😅

[Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 @JessicaBRiedl]

Absolutely terrible. The biggest tax hike in decades, and 100% of the revenue would go to (often wealthy) retirees so that they can keep collecting more than they paid in.

Oh, and it keeps Social Security out of deficit for just 4 years. What happened to the Republican party?

[Logan Dobson @LoganDobson]

The existence of Loudon County is very helpful. Loudon, one county, has ~1/20 of ALL data centers in the United States.

If it were the case that data centers drove up electricity costs, Loudon would have crazy electricity bills. They don’t. They’re below the national average

[Alexander Kustov @akoustov]

OK folks, let's dial down the nerves and see what they're actually talking about here. In their own words: "public control of strategic assets" (the means of production in key sectors), "credit guidance" (the state decides where investment goes), "universal public provisioning" of housing, health, education and transport, and moving past the "grow-tax-transfer" model.

Lenin had a name for keeping the strategic sectors and the credit system in state hands while tolerating markets: the commanding heights. I was born in the Soviet Union, so I know a little bit about communism. I can see it a mile away, even when it's called something else.

[Jordan Schachtel @JordanSchachtel]

AI isn't a job-killer that the Doomers say it is. The opposite is true. It's the ultimate democratizer. It's a tool that distributes knowledge, capability, and opportunity to anyone with an internet connection. A kid in rural America can now access the world's best tutor, coder, and strategist in their pocket. That's simply unprecedented. This tool is creating the fairest and freest playing field in U.S. history

But if select powerful ideologues in the industry get their way with heavy regulation, "safety" bureaucracies, and deployment gatekeeping, this technology will become a CCP-adjacent tool for centralized power and elite control.

Distribute the knowledge. There is no need and no legitimate ethical or security reason to gatekeep it indefinitely. Free flowing AI for all Americans beats controlled AI for a new group of oligarchs.

America wins by unleashing AI, not by managing it into an elite hierarchy of privilege.

[Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 @JessicaBRiedl]

Showing that "uncapping the payroll tax does not fully fund Social Security" is easy and requires no complicated models or "just trust me." Its basic math you can verify yourself.

CBO projects Social Security to level off at:
- Spending around 6.0-6.2% of GDP.
- Dedicated tax revenues of 4.5% of GDP (from 4.2% in payroll taxes plus 0.3% in other small taxes).

Yet we also know that SocSec's payroll tax covers 83% of all wages. Eliminating the cap would cover 100%.

So if covering 83% collects 4.2% of GDP in payroll taxes ... then covering 100% would collect 4.2/0.83=5.06% of GDP in payroll taxes.

Add back that 0.3% of GDP from related taxes, and we're at 5.36% of GDP in Social Security revenues.

That covers half of the funding gap (see chart).

(We're giving the rosiest scenario, so let's ignore that a tax hike of this size would give back some revenues from disincentives - and we're also canceling any earned benefits from these taxes).

That's it. That's the math you can verify yourself. The key calculation is that the current payroll tax catches 83% of wages and collects 4.2% of GDP. So you can calculate what a 100% policy would collect (an additional 0.86%) and compare to the spending projections.

So, no, "eliminate the cap, problem solved" is not correct. You still have to address benefits and the eligibility age.

[Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 @JessicaBRiedl]

Senators elected this fall will be in office when the SocSec trust fund hits insolvency. So it *should* be a major campaign issue.

But few voters care. They have their silly narratives ("stop stealing the trust fund,") & fake solutions ("remove the cap"). But, y'all were warned.

[Steve Everley @saeverley]

Let’s dispel the myth that AI lacks value beyond faster cat videos and vague stuff like “efficiency gains in the future.”

AI is now - and it’s already doing awesome, life-saving things.

🧵

[Michael J. Hout @michaeljhout]

During the Russian Famine of 1921-22, an estimated 5 million people died.

Many resorted to cannibalism, particularly in the Volga region.

The most common form of cannibalism was necrophagy (corpse-eating).

Then there was the intra-familial cannibalism, where children were killed by their own parents to keep the remaining family members alive.

Some parents chose to euthanize their children to spare them a slow, excruciating death by starvation, consuming the bodies afterward.

In regions like Samara, Soviet authorities had to close numerous butcher shops and cafeterias after discovering they were serving human flesh.

In short:

Lenin’s Marketing - Peace, Land, and Bread.

Lenin’s Product - Terror, Famine, and Death.

(Photos are from Volga region, 1921)

[Sandeep Kaushik @skaushik100]

In Feb. 2020 a comprehensive analysis commissioned by the University of California system found both that SAT scores were a better predictor of college success than high school grades, and that test scores were a primary means by which admissions officers in the UC system identified poor and minority students (who tended to have lower grade point averages) who merited admission to the system’s more selective colleges.

Completely ignoring the findings of its own report, in May 2020 the University of California regents voted unanimously (23-0) to eliminate the SAT requirement. That vote is one of the most glaring and spectacular examples of how culturally cosmopolitan elites’ stampede to adopt woke ideas in that era was rooted not in rationality but in emotion and self-congratulatory groupthink.

https://t.co/2s0fnbtTWw