Digital Craftsman đš Democratic Socialist
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Joined March 2009
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#LeftIsBest has left an indeliable mark on my political thought â
Pinning this indefinitely because Michael Brooksâs work was deep and just starting and will always worth connecting to if you havenât yet
Rest In Power
a spectre daunting retweeted
Trump is an authoritarian.
He wants to intimidate his political opponents, the media and all those who disagree with him.
Ilhan Omar came to America legally as a child refugee fleeing civil war, became a citizen and was elected to Congress.
Trump is weaponizing the federal government to silence opposition. Fight back. Defend democracy.
a spectre daunting retweeted
My uncle noticed his monthly water and sewage bill jumped from $85 to $290 over the last six months, even though his family didn't fill a single pool or leak a gallon.
He called the municipal water board to report what he assumed was a meter error.
The clerk explained that the city sold the local water treatment facility and underground main grid to an infrastructure equity fund last year to cover municipal budget deficits.
When my uncle asked why that tripled his rate, she told him:
"The private operator added a quarterly 'grid modernization surcharge' and an 'infrastructure maintenance access fee' to every residential account."
Nothing about the pipes, pressure, or water quality improved.
Private equity isn't just buying houses and daycares anymore.
They are acquiring local utility monopolies so they can bill working families a mandatory tax on drinking water and flushing the toilet.
a spectre daunting retweeted
Thiel and his fellow billionaires have used another trick: qualifying two poison-pill measures â Propositions 41 and 42 â for the ballot.
Prop 42 is particularly deceptive: it is advertised as a way to protect Californians from a tax on their retirement savings.
In reality, its sole goal is to void Prop 40 â the California billionaire wealth tax. No one, anywhere, advocates for taxing middle-class wealth.
The only pension wealth that would be taxed by Prop 40 is Thielâs Roth IRA billions.
a spectre daunting retweeted
At this point, there is only one thing standing between Thiel and his dream of enjoying his immense fortune tax free forever: Proposition 40.
If Californians vote for the billionaire wealth tax, they could finally force him to pay tax.
Thatâs why Thiel is fighting Prop 40 tooth and nail.
He's donated $3 million to oppose it and has made a show of moving to Florida to escape California's proposed billionaire wealth tax.
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In a traditional IRA (as opposed to a Roth IRA), people must pay taxes when they withdraw money during retirement.
In Europe, billionaires must pay taxes when they withdraw money from their holding companies to fund their personal expenditures.
But in 6 months, @peterthiel will be able to withdraw money from his Roth IRA completely tax free.
He will be free to use its billions in any way he likes: not just for investment, but for funding political campaigns, candidates for office, âthink tanksâ, any type of spending he wants.
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This is similar to how billionaires in Europe use holding companies to avoid tax â perpetually reinvesting tax free.
Retirement accounts originally designed for middle-class Americans have become massive tax shelters for billionaires like Thielâright here in the United States.
But itâs in fact worse than that. Because hereâs the catch.
a spectre daunting retweeted
In 1999, @PeterThiel earned $73,263 a year at PayPal. That made him eligible to open a Roth IRA.
And thatâs exactly what he did. But not to put away $2,000 a year for retirement.
Instead, he set out to build an extraordinary tax-avoidance machine.
a spectre daunting retweeted
Before we begin, understand this: time is running out.
Tomorrow, @PeterThiel turns 59.
And when he turns 59½âjust six months from nowâhe'll be able to claim an extraordinary victory he's been quietly working toward since 1999.
But there's still a way to stop him.
The countdown has begun.
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Oh look, the global capital of social housing has the highest quality of life for the lowest cost
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Anwar Shaikhâs brilliant teaching and scholarship helped an entire generation understand the inner logic of capitalism.
He will be missed not only by colleagues and students in the field, but by the countless people whose understanding of the world was enriched by his work.
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đ¨The devil is in the patent filings:
âWalmart is pouring resources into developing & protecting technology it needs to create intimate shopper profiles & use that data to shape what consumers pay.â
Incredible reporting by @owenslindsay1 @NiaMLaw & @ENPancotti in @LeverNews đ
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New blog post: "Type out the code"
I wrote this post to explain why I think more people should practice "freecoding" (coding as much as possible from memory)
haskellforall.com/2026/05/tyâŚ
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Populism is a communicative style and a tactic. It can be a starting point, but there's no substitute for the twin forms that have sustained us for 160+ years: the mass party and the trade union.
a spectre daunting retweeted
a spectre daunting retweeted
One of the many small but substantial measures Mexicoâs wildly popular democratic socialist government is taking to materially improve the lives of citizens is to develop these tough little electric cars and trucks that people can buy directly from the state for about $50/month.
a spectre daunting retweeted
My take on school meals: Make them UNIVERSAL so no child goes to school hungry.
It has worked in Minnesota. Now itâs time for us to provide free meals to all students nationwide.
Every meal we serve means one less child worried about hunger and one more student ready to learn.
Thatâs an investment Iâll defend every damn day.
mprnews.org/story/2026/09/22âŚ
a spectre daunting retweeted
you aren't mad enough at Joe Biden
Another enraging revelation from @AkbarSAhmed: To stop Bernie Sanders from forcing a vote to block weapons to Israel, Biden personally called him and led him to believe his administration was preparing to sanction Ben-Gvir. It was, of course, a lie.
a spectre daunting retweeted
đ¨ At the U20 Mayors Summit, Mamdani Says the Left Has Ceded âQuality of Life,â âEfficiency,â and âFraud and Wasteâ to the Right
This was one of the more interesting arguments Zohran Mamdani made today at the U20 Mayors Summit, and a reminder that he can be genuinely sharp when he drops the âcentral castingâ routine.
âIn New York City, there are certain words that have taken on ideological associations.â
âQuality of life has come to be seen as somehow a right-wing concern. Efficiency⌠has been taken on as a right-wing concern, rooting out fraud and waste, a right-wing concern.â
Mamdaniâs argument is that refusing to engage those issues actually helps the Right.
âIf you are staring at an example of social disorder or social inefficiency, and the left refuses to explain either why it has happened or how they will fix it, then the right gets to point at someone in the immediate area and say, âThatâs who did it.ââ
The harder question is how much of the broader Left is actually prepared to follow the advice.
a spectre daunting retweeted
For those of you too young to remember who Accenture is...
Weâre partnering with Accenture on independent evaluation of frontier AIâpart of our recent commitment to embed evaluators at Anthropic. Both we and Accenture expect to invest at least $1 billion to build capacity in this area over the next five years. anthropic.com/news/accentureâŚ
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Anthropic presents this as an "independent evaluation" but will directly fund Accenture's work and has a prior commercial partnership deploying its models, including training ~30,000 Accenture professionals on Claude.
anthropic.com/news/accentureâŚ
anthropic.com/news/anthropicâŚ