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The thing to remember about Elon Musk is that *he* is the brand. Not Tesla (whose P/E is an order of magnitude higher than Ford and GM), not SpaceX, not Twitter. The valuations of these companies are intimately tied to the public perceptions of Musk. Yesterday, Musk showed us the future of Twitter by re-tweeting an anti-LGBT rumor about Paul Pelosi. Advertisers, who account for ca. 90% of the money-losing budget of Twitter don't want their brand associated with nutjobs. And Musk has already fired the Twitter leadership that had been steering this sinking ship until now. "ELON MUSK (and his consortium of much smaller investors) now owns Twitter. We need to take seriously the possibility that this will end up being one of the funniest things that’s ever happened. "That’s because as of this moment, it looks like Musk dug a big hole in the forest, carefully filled it with punji sticks and crocodiles, and then jumped in." As teh kidz say, read the rest here: https://thein...

 Exxon just posted their highest quarterly profit in the history of the company. "Faced with calls to share the oil industry’s 2022 windfall with the American people, Exxon CEO Darren Woods says he’s doing just that — in the form of a big dividend payout to shareholders. No really. I’m not kidding. “There has been discussion in the U.S. about our industry returning some of our profits directly to the American people,” says Exxon Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods. “That’s exactly what we’re doing in the form of our quarterly dividend.” In case you live under a rock, shareholder dividends are not actually sent to the American people. They’re sent to the owners of Exxon, shareholders. So Exxon is sharing the wealth with the American people in the sense of making a lot of profits for Exxon and sharing it with the company’s owners." https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/exxon-chief-were-getting-rich-on-behalf-of-the-american-people

While our recent move has, and continues to have, significant sources of anxiety, one benefit it that--for the first time in my life--I live in a blue state. Which means a majority of my fellow citizens share my ethical and moral values. To be fair, University City was a blue enclave in a red state, but my bike rides in unincorporated St. Louis County, as well as other areas of outstate Missouri confronted me with confederate flags and other reminders that I lived in an island of civilization surrounded by a sea of anti-American hostility. So while we continue to try and establish our little homestead in New England, at least I'm no longer surrounded by cretins.

The Republican candidates are desperately trying to misdirect from their pro-forced birth and anti-Social Security/anti-Medicare agenda by bleating about crime. Ask yourself (and them): how do you feel about the crime of insurrection at the Capital, desecration of the People's House, and the seditious interference with American democracy. If they don't admit that 6 January was a crime committed in the name of Trump, they don't really care about crime, they just care about Republican power.

How is this different from the claims Vladimir Putin is making about Ukraine? [Menachem Begin's] election represented the confirmation of the fears Kapeliouk expressed in Not By Omission: that Israel would fail to critically examine its responsibility in the 1973 War, deciding instead to double down on its confrontation with the Arab world. Shortly before being elected, journalists asked Begin about his intentions for the Occupied Territories. He replied, “We do not use the word annexation; you annex foreign land, not your own country.”" https://www.juancole.com/2022/10/kapeliouk-omission-israeli.html

If you’d asked me thirty years ago what I thought of Glenn Gould, I would have recalled that he was a Canadian pianist who recorded an extended monolog about Petula Clark. I have three or four Gould recordings on LP, including his famous interpretation of the Bach Goldberg Variations. Since we moved, I’ve listened to these LPs again. While I’m certainly no expert on keyboard performance practice, I do appreciate the novelty of Gould’s approach. In some ways, his keyboard attack reminds me of another favorite keyboard performer, Keith Jarrett. Setting aside the fact that both emit random vocalizations during their performances, they both have a percussive style, albeit using very different biomechanics. Today, I’ve been listening to some YouTubes about Gould—his biography and his critics. In some ways, he was the Bobby Fischer of the keyboard—eccentric, grandiose, narcissistic and consumed with his art. Despite his odd performance practice, using a low chair and flat finger technique, h...

The SS taxes paid by current workers are used to fund current beneficiaries. Any excess must, by law, be invested in US treasuries, which are loans to the general fund that must eventually be paid back with interest. Social Security funding is separate from the regular budget. Thus, Social Security *does not* contribute to the deficit or the national debt. Anyone who says otherwise is ignorant or lying. The GOP is threatening cuts (yes, raising the eligibility limit is effectively a cut to benefits) to SS on the grounds that the national debt is too high. This is a phony argument (see first paragraph). If the GOP were really concerned about the national debt, it would be pushing for tax increases--rolling back the Bush and Trump tax cuts--and for taxing investment income like regular income (the 1% get most of their wealth from investments, not salary). The GOP will bleat that this will tank the economy, because the 1% are the "job creators." No, the job creators are the midd...