Are you really just completely ignorant of the purpose of tariffs?
Re-read what I wrote:
the immediate effect of new tarriffs is making Americans poorer.
Do tariffs work? Maybe. You also have to remember that China will retaliate and impose tariffs on US good, so overall the effects of tariffs are rarely a net benefit for anyone - which is why they’re rarely a good idea.
But the fact remains that the day after tariffs are applied, Americans lose access to cheaper goods. That’s just a dry fact.
I think it was worse befor
I didn’t say it was a new thing. Every time I read the news or open a hisoty book, I’m hit by a wave of nausea, How can a species this evolved be this terrible?
And the shame is, while I try to be a decent person, I’m still one of them.
I am ashamed to be part of the humane race.
Funny you should ask: I installed Debian 32-bit on an old Asus Eee PC netbook yesterday to breathe new life into that old machine and turn it into a controller for a piece of test equipment we have at work. My company keeps old stuff like that around until space is needed in case someone needs something.
Just in case I had to modify something in the tester’s control software, I figured I’d install i3wm and Vim. It didn’t take long and I was surprised by how usable the machine ended up being. Honestly I wouldn’t have minded using it as a bone fide laptop for light-duty work on the go.
So basically keep your expectations low and install super-lightweight software, and your old Aspire could live a few extra productive years instead of going to the landfill.
I have small flower stickers that I use on my car to cover nicks in the paint and prevent rust without having to do a full paintjob. As my car gets older, it gets more and more flowery 🙂
I would use the same thing over an unwanted logo on a prosthetic limb: if you can’t remove the tattoo, at least make it your own, and a sticker can be peeled off.
Honestly in my opinion it is time to remove all tariffs on EVs under 25k and let anyone who wants to fill that slot in.
One essential thing bears repeating: it’s not the manufacturer that bears the cost of tariffs, it’s the customers. Or said another way, if BYD cars double in price in the US, it’s American customers who will pay the difference.
A certain presidential candidate loves to beat that drum but consistently fails to mention that the immediate effect of new tariffs is making Americans poorer.
Here’s a little story that shows how much society has become dystopian:
Back in the 90’s, I worked in France for a while. When I was there, a case was brought up against the state that had violated a CNIL rule: some dude was cheating on his taxes by claiming he lived at some address. Tthe French fiscal administration sued him because they obtained a file from the electricity company and another from the water utilty company showing that the consumption of both electricity and water were so low it wasn’t consistent with the dude actually living there.
The case was thrown out, the dude walked and the state was fined because it had violated a rule that clearly stipulated cross-referencing files for the purpose of extracting secondary information that wasn’t available in each single file was a violation of privacy and civil liberties.
I shit you not. This used to be a thing.
Can you imagine this today? All the Big Data sonsabitches cross-reference billions of files ALL THE TIME and nobody bats an eyelid anymore.
If you’re old enough, you remember sovereign states taking privacy seriously. If you’re not, you don’t. And that’s how Big Data gets away with what they do today because fewer and fewer people remember a time when it was unacceptable.
Eventually we’ll hit big brother levels.
As someone who was born before the age of surveillance capitalism, I can tell you we’ve hit that level a long time ago. Anybody who thinks society has been running normally for at least the past 15 years is too young to have known what a normal society is.
To evade taxes of course.
Have you ever asked yourself how it’s possible that ALL the fucking ultra-rich almost without exception do philanthropy?
It doesn’t make sense: most of those millionaires and billionaires are psychopaths who essentially don’t give a shit about their fellow man, acquired their wealth by exploiting and shafting others for the most part, and don’t give a shit about how that makes them look: why on Earth would any of them do philanthropy, let alone all of them?
It only starts to make sense when you understand philanthropy is yet another tax loophole.
I would suggest we give him the 3,000 acres of Lana’i he doesn’t own, so the entire island belongs to him, then strand him there forever.
I have been hating this man’s guts since the mid 90’s and somehow it never lets off. Most hateful people manage to become a little bit more likeable as they age. Even this disgusting piece of human refuse Bill Gates might pass for a somewhat okay human being if you wilfully overlook why he truly does philanthropy.
But Larry Ellison? Hell no. He never changes. he’s just consistently the worst year after year, decade after decade.
What if you don’t want a Pixel? Or a Fairphone? Or one of the very, VERY few cellphones that you can install a deGoogled OS on?
There are precious few ways of escaping the Google monopoly. I own a Fairphone running CalyxOS, and it happens to be the phone I want because of its excellent repairability. So lucky me. But if I didn’t want a Fairphone, nor any Samsung phone, nor any Chinese cellphone, and certainly not a fucking Google phone - because I’d rather cut off my left nut than give Google money to escape Google’s surveillance, that’s just too rich for me - then I’d be SOL.
My point is, if you refuse to be Google’s bitch, Google backs you into a corner. Just because you’re happy with the corner doesn’t mean you’re not stuck in a corner.
Google “might let me” do something…
If that doesn’t summarize everything that’s wrong with this fucking monopolist, that controls YOUR device that you paid with YOUR money but ultimately isn’t yours to do as you please, I don’t know what does.
The only thing that makes Google a bit tolerable in the mobile space is Apple, because Apple is even worse. At least you can (still) sideload stuff in Android - although Google is about to make that impossible very soon too.
Fuck the monopolists.
That’s a great app. I didn’t know that one. Thanks!
What really boggles the mind is how anybody listens to Trump’s crazy BS and decides to do something about it rather than shake their head in disbelief and reach for another beer.
Runbox, a privacy-focused email provider out of Norway. Our family has been using it for many years with zero issues. The prices are very decent.
If those Russian teens wanted to make a ton of money blowing shit up, all they had to do was enlist in the military.
There is a difference though: if Puttin declares Russia at war with NATO countries, it’s only one word away from nuclear war. And if you think crazy Ivan isn’t crazy enough, wait until his conventional weapons supplies and troops are stretch to too thin…
It’s a problem if you need a fucking banking app for example, and the bank won’t let you sideload it and you’re running a deGoogled OS. Then you suddenly need a backup phone with the full surveillance Android just to do banking.
Again, reread what I wrote: I made no comment on the long term efficacy of tariffs. All I said was that when a presidential candidate says “we’ll make China pay”, it’s factually incorrect.