mercy_dude

Umm it should concern everyone if FBI, a law enforcement agency with sweeping power, invades a journalist or a private individual’s house. This sort of normalization of FBI raids to individual citizens is bad for individual and civil liberties, the number of such raids have disproportionately grown over last decade. FBI is an agency known for broad abuse of power and the last thing we need is politicization and sweeping normalization of their abusive behaviours. Even as recent as July, a judge questioned their tactic of raiding a defendants hous instead of just asking them to turn themselves https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2022/07/15/judge-questions...

If anything we need more oversight from media, not less. FBI is known to bypass any scrutiny like FISA warrants and rubber stamp things as they wish.

Define criminals. It’s not just an opinionated matter, any allegations have to be proven beyond reasonable doubt with presumption of innocence till proven guilty. Law works like that in this country. But also if a person is subject to criminal investigation for extended period of times (over three years), you would expect charges. So far other than some obscure “lying about net worth”, there is no charges.

Vindicating individuals you seem criminal with questionable raids from agencies with sweeping powers that are known for abuse of power have consequences. As in this case, it can very easily come for the other side. FBI is reportedly known for profiling MLK and other activists.

As we have seen with Assange or Steele dossier, search warrants don’t matter. FBI abused and misled FISA judges on multiple occasions and rubber stamped warrant by the administration which largely uses FBI as its street cover.

> Who is being gone after?

Donald Trump, Ronald DeSantis, Greg Abott all have been under aggressive FBI investigation. Nikki Haley had her tax records leaked to media.

> what is so ruthless

There are multiple cases where even the judges were objecting FBI actions why they had to aggressively raid the peoples home. https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2022/07/15/judge-questions...

I am curious how we are going about studying these in Macaques. Are we trying to deliberately get them the virus and see how their brain respond? If so, haven’t we learned enough on how virus jumps species and can wreck havoc?

> The CDC did fine with what they had to work with to be honest.

If that’s the standard we have to live by after the most devastating pandemic in a century for the most developed country in the world, then there is not going to be any lessons or improvement when the next one hits.

The CDC didn’t (still doesn’t) have a full picture of mode of transmission of the virus (aerosol vs others). They kept saying it’s not airborne when all being said it looks like it is. Their focus on hand washing in retrospection seems like not a productive strategy whatsoever. The whole mask fiasco (first saying it isn’t recommended and then a straight up 180) caused the public in rooted mistrust and then their PR umbrella did a poor job addressing and admitting any failure. Their PR branch effectively did nothing to earn trust of a large swaths of public who didn’t buy into vaccination other than often resorting to name calling and gaslighting the debate further which is absolutely the opposite of what you would want to do in that situation if you really want people to get vaccinated. Many occasions they did slow walk backs and often no oversights on grants and revolving doors setup within these agencies with FDA and other pharma industries. Calling everyone criticizing you “anti-science” is a great way of not learning any lessons for next epidemic. There is a lot we can do better.

It’s not surprising at all. Current administration has setup a revolving door with quite a few Google execs working in the administration. Eric Schmidt is known to have done fundraising in 2020.

> If it's obvious to me that this is exactly what will happen, it should be obvious to Fed board members

You also have to discount the possibility that Fed might be incompetent, given how their recent track record has been in predicting transitory inflation and delays in calling off QE.

Given the size of Californias population and and it’s spending power, the grand effect on the entire country would be higher. I wonder if the rest of the states would have to pay the prices (through rising rates).

> Mail-in/absentee ballot request forms typically require applicants to sign the form and affirm their eligibility to cast a mail-in/absentee ballot under penalty of law. Upon receipt of a mail-in/absentee ballot request form, election officials implement varying procedures to verify the identity and eligibility of the applicant prior to sending the applicant a mail-in/absentee ballot. Such procedures include checking the signature and information submitted on the form against the corresponding voter registration record, as well as ensuring that multiple mail-in/absentee ballots are not sent in response to applications using the same voter’s information.

Let’s see. In 2020, many duplicates were sent. Ballots were sent for dead people. So the rumour is not only true, it has already been happening across the country as recently as last election.

https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/duplicates-and-dead-...

And wouldn’t be surprised if China used or continue to use these covet tactics to alter election results.

> In this case, the alleged conduct had no impact on the tabulation of votes and did not alter election results

Would be curious how they asserted that. A contractor in the last election dumped ballots in garbage in Pennsylvania. Justice department maintained it didn’t alter election integrity.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/temporary-contractor-threw-t...

Yikes Toronto. I grew up there (immigrant parents first destination before moving down south) but despise it now for what it has become. An over expensive cesspool of the house owning NIMBY class with terrible traffic and disregard for driving rules or anything really that Canada I grew up in used to stand for like good manners. Lived in Syracuse as well before moving to the west coast. Don’t miss the snow or the cold. Only if there wasn’t so many wildfire.

When the goal of media is to act as the propaganda arm for ruling elites who are hell bent on establishing anything outside their pushed narrative is misinformation, there is no going back. Virtually the same thing happened with Covid, vaccines, elections, Russiagate and there has been no lesson learned, no corrections or reflections. The purpose of the media is not to keep the people in power in check but to act for whatever agenda they are pushing.

Who is the monster and why?

Current liberal government is running a very wild experiment here with regards to immigration. For context, when I graduated from a Canadian university back in 2014, there was a very straightforward immigration system. The students graduating from a Canadian university would get the permanent residence within about 2yrs, inna Fast track manner. Provinces used to have their own cap and “eligibility criteria” for labor pools correlated with job categories with highest demands.

Then Canada decided to run some kind of a wild federally run “point based” immigration system starting 2015. Under that scheme, criterias such as education, job experience get you some assigned points. For example someone with a masters degree would get 20 points and someone with 10yr job experience would get 25points etc. You would qualify if your points are above some threshold and Federal government runs some kind of lotteries every few weeks to pick candidates in the qualified pool inviting them to apply.

Except the problem is now, there are too many frauds in the system. In many countries, accreditation and job experiences can be easily bought. And now that international students graduating from Canada fall under the same pool, they have to compete with these same people sometimes holding masters degrees with job experiences that are “bought”. Result is many international students are putting up with extreme delays and most wealthier populace from third world countries buying their way out the PR with fake “points”. Add to that super visa, which gives parents and grandparents of anyone in Canada with permanent residence 10yrs visa. And finally add to that the “visitors” to Canada who end up claiming asylum, many of them crossing the border from US. In this year alone that number has surpassed 35k. Just talk to any immigration attorney and the reality on the ground is abysmal, many are taking wild advantage of lenient refugee program.

Result is an extremely backlogged immigration system, rising costs of housing, slow wage growth at entry levels.

Now back to The current liberal government and media Who have basically made it equivalent to racism to even talk about this issue. Very recently, a provincial immigration minister was vilified for bringing this issue to light saying “more immigrants beyond a certain cap would be a suicide”. Which is indeed true as the strained healthcare system already shows.

Immigrants tend to come to Canada for its tolerant populace and free healthcare (at least when compared to US). But lately this is coming to a questionable reality as healthcare quality and wait times have gotten so bad many people are seeking private healthcare if they can afford. Coupled with a cost of living nightmare in most big cities such as Toronto and Vancouver, it is not a positive outlook and it can seriously turn the populace anti immigration and make this a seriously political issue as in US.

I don’t understand the attack on detached family home. We have a lot of land. And enough natural resources to fund enough renewable ventures such as EV adoption and renewable energy production. This seems to be a wider effort by a group of loud mouths to discourage families to single family homes while investors gobble up SFHs in North America at record speed. I mean who do you think are going to own the lions share of multi family housing they espouse?

The authors best argument seems to be well connected public transport but that argument falls pretty quickly if you go outside the core. Suburbs like Laval land Brossard are just as bad and take over an hour to reach downtown. And there is enormous amount of corruption- most of past Montreal mayors have faced corruption charges , it is so ingrained.

Does anyone read books anymore? I recently went to the university Library I went to 15yrs back and I was shocked to see how few students were reading books. Most were on their laptops presumably reading from e books.

Well China owns the lions share of real estate in Toronto and Vancouver. And given how Canadian economy is dependent on real estate it’s not surprising. [1] [2]

[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-why-are-chin...

[2] https://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/chinese-rea...

Not sure what part of insider trading is legal [1]

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/congress-stock-act-violation...

I would have more faith in SEC trying to protect the “integrity of the market” when they pursue all the Congressman and their family cronies actively using insider information to trade.

There is a sign through some of the lagging indicators that economy is “cooling off” and the anticipation of recession being spearheaded by the Fed is actually working. The container stat shows also a record slowdown along with a drop in spot rate. Would be interesting to see if the Fed takes them into account or keep pressing the brakes as if they are in a panic mode and not willing to be clueless.

“The scholar Tamara Nopper told me she felt some Asian Americans were using hate-crime discourse as a way to avoid “dealing with anti-Blackness.” She admitted she had hesitated to tweet #StopAsianHate because she was concerned that joining in would contribute to the impression that we’re living through a crime wave and should turn to carceral solutions.”

So the Asian American community wants to feel safe because there is a heightened sense of crime directed against them but shouldn’t want to acknowledge there is a “crime wave”? And many of the law enforcement measures that would be effective aren’t to be considered because they could lead higher rates in African American incarceration because of over representation (over half) in the homeless population? There seems to be conflicted sets of priorities and metrics being considered here.

It seems the metrics being used is lower incarceration among African American communities which I can fully agree with. But there is a spillover of this well intentioned effort due to not enforcement of law or people fearing to report a crime. Is this a correct reading of the situation? Perhaps “lowering homeless rate” would be another key metrics to consider?

While I am all for community policing and self defence which the article casually segway to instead of addressing the root cause of the issue, in a civil society a person of a certain race or color should not have to resort to that to feel safe. NY state and NYC has one of the highest tax rates in the country and it is a sad state of affairs the minority communities have to live through this.

If NYTimes had any shred of journalistic integrity left, they would be looking into themselves first before pointing out other “broken bro cultures”

But that is what happens when you watch MSNBC and CNN, and the vice versa when you watch Fox. An entire generation now exists incapable of having intellectual arguments thinking beyond party line just because the people they follow in the media (social and news) continues to drive the argument in terms that is very close to derangement syndromes. Both sides are responsible but one one side is more amplified due to their majority presence in HN.

Agree Europe is a different story altogether- their currency free fall against Dollar is more to do with the mixed signal ECB is sending by still having to buy Italian and Greek bonds that find no other buyers AND at the same time trying to do a rate hike. And that is at the backdrop of a cold nuclear (potentially) winter.

> It has nothing to do with US Dollar dominance

Say that to Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, Argentina or literally any other developing currencies out there.

That was exactly my point though. The way you “fight inflation” is you raise the rates and that means all currencies pegged to yours must raise their rates at the same pace no matter what their economic conditions are like or they get destroyed in FX market. Look at right now EUR, GBP or YEN. The way Fed fights inflation is nothing but rest of the world (mostly developing world) pegged to your dollar monopoly bailing you out. And that inevitably requires hard commodity asset repricing.

Assuming US can print any value of USD out of thin existence as they have done multiple times in last 20yrs, it doesn’t matter for them whether they later buy in the oil to fill the reserve back at 40$ or 400$.

Key issue here is that we are seeing hard assets especially commodities being repriced in USD after a steep cycle. The winner here, as always are gulf countries flushing with cash as they are the real owners of the hard commodity assets. And the losers are developing and emerging market economies with poor FX reserves (as we have seen with Sri Lanka, Argentina etc). Pakistan could save 2.26B rupees since last April by trading oil in rupees instead of dollar [1]. The real monopoly in this world is USD hegemony and it’s once again developing economies who will bail out the monopoly paying steep prices for import.

[1] https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-153-the-south-asi...

That includes our own government in US. If you have not noticed, there has been a constant pestering from Congress to censor big tech and “severe consequences” otherwise. And not to say the clear as daylight funding they provide to people in power as part of the lobbying effort. Oh and the same people in media and big tech then decide what is misinformation and not.