@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

GhostOnTheHalfShell

@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai

opinionated lurker of the intarwebs.

Used to write code, still do. c/c++, java, php, js, c#, gdscript, gnawed on sql, sparql, unix/windows etc etc billions of years ago.

tech, graphics, anything STEM
anything anthropology, history, linguistics
anything blender, gimp (although i scream using it), audacity
prefers not to be run over by cars

I drink Philz.

I do a (non-monetized) video or so a week on yt.

Tyranny and poverty are everywhere a mainstream economics phenomenon.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

ChrisMayLA6, to Economics
@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us avatar

The model of 'flexible' labour markets with few(er) protections for workers & curtailed unions was (mainstream economists predicted) going to delver innovation, spur entrepreneurship & lead to better-paid jobs... but we actually have got from it is an economy patterned by low-wage labour, inequality, falling real wages & labour exploitation (via precarious working).

As Larry Elliot suggests, its time to follow unions urging to try a different way!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/16/british-unions-economic-growth-unite-the-union

GhostOnTheHalfShell,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@ChrisMayLA6

Why it’s almost like mainstream free market champions are the most ardent anti-capitalists, because everything they touch destroys markets, property, competition, choice, and agency. I mean who really needs competitors competing in a market place when they can tell how competition works, as perfectly clairvoyant rational utility maximizing scholars. They can pick the winners.

youtu.be/6_fZgytwmcM

ChrisMayLA6, to random
@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us avatar

Britain's record on homelessness is world beating, just not in a good way.

We've the highest recorded levels of homelessness in the developed world; while other counties have seen (albeit slow) declines in homelessness, since 2010 the UK's rate has been accelerating away.

The housing crisis has many dimensions, but here there's a direct correlation between the arrival of the current Tory govt. & massive increases!

The party of landlords is working for them & doing nothing for us!

Chart: Britain has by far the highest rate of homelessness in the developed world. Rate of homelessness per 10,000 people (2023 or latest). UK - 52/10,000 Belgium & France (next ranked) 32/10,00 then all over states listed (in descending order), below 30/10,000: Czechia (27), Germany (26), USA (19), NZ (13), Australia (12), Canada (10), Portugal (10), Denmark (6), Poland (5), Sweden (5), Spain (5), Norway (3), Finland (1)

GhostOnTheHalfShell, (edited )
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@ChrisMayLA6

Murdoch, the FT columnist, said it best, something like the UK is a bunch of rich islands surrounded by a sea of poverty.

GhostOnTheHalfShell,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@ChrisMayLA6

grand cayman east?

meganL, to disability
@meganL@mas.to avatar

Again, I state:

Compare the speed with which businesses & institutions are adopting AI (despite its inaccuracy and lack of ethical provenance) to the footdragging that makes businesses & institutions inaccessible even 34 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law.

I don't want to hear a fucking word about accessibility being an "undue hardship" ever again.

#Ableism #UCAccessNow

@disability

GhostOnTheHalfShell,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@meganL @disability

I look at AI and think it’s going even bigger than the dot.com crash. Since everyone is already laid off, I can only hope it means big platforms simply implodes

ginaintheburg, to random
@ginaintheburg@mastodon.world avatar

surprise:

Thomas agrees: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau doesn't have to petition Congress for funds each year like other govt programs.

It's authorized to draw from the Federal Reserve whatever its Director deems "reasonably necessary to carry out" the Bureau’s duties, subject only to an inflation-adjusted cap.

He wrote: the only question is does this funding mechanism comply w/the Appropriations Clause. We hold it does.

Six others agreed.

https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/blatantly-attempts-to-circumvent-the-constitution-justices-thomas-and-alito-clash-over-agency-created-during-obama-years-after-2008-financial-crisis/

GhostOnTheHalfShell,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@ginaintheburg

Geese, now let’s have more agencies pull directly from the fed.

GhostOnTheHalfShell, to random
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

“Across the country, private companies are swooping in to buy local water and sewer systems from the governments that own them. Then they jack up the prices -- forcing normal people to pay higher rates not just for the water that comes out of their faucets, but even the water that comes out of their toilets.

…

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/take-action-stop-water-privatization-in-your-community

GhostOnTheHalfShell,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

Only because the US is larger has the farce of municipality privatization remained less notable.

GhostOnTheHalfShell, to Humor
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

MMM! The future in home defense!

https://youtu.be/YPW_HeOHA1E

#humor #taticalGnome

therightarticle, to random
@therightarticle@mas.to avatar

British decline linked to Brexit, weak leadership and poor finances in damning report

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rishi-sunak-good-governance-global-index-weak-leadership-b2546403.html

GhostOnTheHalfShell,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@therightarticle

Conservatives bray about government always being the problem. I figure we should take pity on them, because it’s all they know when in power.

GhostOnTheHalfShell, to science
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

May 16

In praise of Earth's little dynamo.

3 min

https://youtu.be/U8PvNOCNxts

ProPublica, to Albuquerque
@ProPublica@newsie.social avatar

Is Throwing Out the Belongings of People, Violating City Policy

The city has violated a court order and its own policies by discarding the personal property of thousands of homeless people, who have lost medications, birth certificates, IDs, treasured family photos and the ashes of loved ones.

https://www.propublica.org/article/albuquerque-homeless-encampments

GhostOnTheHalfShell,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@ProPublica

It’s quiet holocaust of humanity in its own scale. The cruelty, the hideous fucking contempt.

Housing First stops all of this, but this is America, so we murder people in little ways at every step.

GhostOnTheHalfShell, to random
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics@a.gup.pe

Live stream Sat @ 9 am, PST.

Great guest queued for this weekend!

https://www.youtube.com/live/jrquIAehcn0

GhostOnTheHalfShell, to random
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@notjustbikes

Definitely cool factor..

An evolution of strandbeest

https://youtu.be/V3Lai0lZsWI

GhostOnTheHalfShell,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@hyenachow

It’s a child art project. See Strandbeest

GhostOnTheHalfShell,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@tuckerteague @notjustbikes

If you like going backwards. ^^

A retrospective kind of travel.

rbreich, to random
@rbreich@masto.ai avatar

Half of Amazon warehouse workers struggle with food and housing costs.

A third of the workers have had to rely on at least one government assistance program.

Amazon's stock hit an all time high in April. Jeff Bezos is now worth $203 billion.

This is what oligarchy looks like.

GhostOnTheHalfShell,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@rbreich

More specifically, plutocracy.

FantasticalEconomics, to Economics
@FantasticalEconomics@geekdom.social avatar

Self-interest + shortermism + monopoly power = whatever this shit is:

"Frontier knew that it could make a billion dollars in profit over a decade by investing in fiber build-out, but it chose not to, because stock analysts will downrank any carrier that made capital investments that took more than five years to mature. Because Frontier's execs were paid primarily in stock, they chose... to leave a billion dollars sitting on the table..."

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/16/symmetrical-10gb-for-119/#utopia

@pluralistic

GhostOnTheHalfShell, (edited )
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@FantasticalEconomics @pluralistic

I put it under the differences of financialization (stock placement) priorities over capital investment priorities. They are at odds with each other. It’s reminiscent of hardware vs software engineer differences. The sorts of things to prioritize between the two disciplines are conflicting.

Financial business practice prolly knows they can milk the stock market with greater certainty.

Financialziation has come to dominate US business practice.

GhostOnTheHalfShell,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@FantasticalEconomics @jackofalltrades :srofl: :ablobcatbongocry:

dlakelan, to statistics
@dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org avatar

So I'm probably going to be nerd sniped into developing a Jupyter notebook to examine the question of how well are mid income families 2 adults and 2 kids doing relative to how well their parents were doing 30 years earlier. I'm going to use a dirichlet prior over the weights on a 5 item CPI based expense index. The missing part is paired nominal earnings of people and their parents... Anyone know a dataset @economics@a.gup.pe

GhostOnTheHalfShell,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics@a.gup.pe

It looks like global warming images. For the uninitiated like me, the different lines represent what?

— ah different dice rolls, right?

GhostOnTheHalfShell,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics@a.gup.pe

Gotcha, thanks. 🙇‍♂️

GhostOnTheHalfShell,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics@a.gup.pe

The latter, obv. Unless one clings to certain orthodoxies..

GhostOnTheHalfShell,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics@a.gup.pe

Pssh there you go again with a silly idea people live on a budget.

timkmak, to random
@timkmak@journa.host avatar

Here's what we're reading today:

In #Vovchansk, #Kharkiv region, where active hostilities are taking place, the first executions of civilians by #Russian troops have been reported, police said. A man who tried to flee on foot was killed. Civilians are also being captured.

Evacuations had been taking place, but now the Russian military, trying to gain a foothold in the city, is not allowing locals to evacuate.

https://www.dw.com/uk/klimenko-vijska-rf-berut-v-polon-ta-rozstriluut-civilnih-u-vovcansku/a-69095571

GhostOnTheHalfShell,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@timkmak

Russia is also exporting oil through pipelines of its neighbors.. it’s very hard to say how much they are still selling.

SteveRoth, to random
@SteveRoth@mastodon.world avatar

This gets amazingly little attention:

In the greatest "real-world" global supply and production shutdown "shock" since...ever? U.S. households' equity wealth … ~doubled.

Explain.

(Those equity assets are 87% held by the top-10% of wealthholders, top 20% of income recipients.)

GhostOnTheHalfShell,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@SteveRoth A couple observations though, home ownership is heavily skewed by age. I have to wonder how heavily skewed the averages are by that.

Also so much wealth is stored up in the stock market, which can completely implode in a debt deflation spiral, I don’t know if we see a complete picture from that kind of data.

The US has faced a housing crisis about every 8-12 years. Prices will rises with accelerating interest rates (per Keen), so one bump has or will come from Fed policy.

GhostOnTheHalfShell, to Economics
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics@a.gup.pe

“ One look at this chart should be sufficient to understand why the Great Crash of 1929 was both great, and a major cause of the Great Depression which followed it, and why levered speculation, rather than rational calculation, dominates the behaviour of asset markets.”

https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/your-margin-and-your-life

🧵

GhostOnTheHalfShell,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics@a.gup.pe

I’m kind of curious what the system response (of housing prices) to a deceleration of interest rates. If price changes reflect acceleration of home loan interest rates, how does a deceleration propagate into the economy? The US economy is built upon the housing sector. It plays an outsized role in economic health.

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