Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
There’s a fascinating egotism to the belief that we are in the end times https://t.co/qCLRkMtIOy
New York Magazine @NYMag
“The decision to have children has always struck me as an essentially selfish one: You choose, out of a desire for fulfillment or self-betterment or boredom or peer pressure, to bring a human into this world. It has never seemed more selfish than today” https://t.co/FRqO1zEpnV
2:35 PM · Oct 5, 2021
185 Reposts · 2.39K Likes
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
A couple of generations ago there were people who lived through two world wars and the Great Depression such that they barely even mentioned the Spanish Flu as a significant disaster.
2:41 PM · Oct 5, 2021
54 Reposts · 1.08K Likes
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
I mean that is literally how money works.
Edward Snowden @Snowden
Our monetary system is commanded by people who literally believe changing the "one dollar" stamp on a platinum coin to "one trillion dollars" is the solution to running out of money.
Imagine if you tried that with your student loans.
https://t.co/xZyVFwYbeO
4:56 PM · Oct 5, 2021
104 Reposts · 2.27K Likes
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
If the numbers on the $20 bills in my wallet were different, I would have a different amount of money in my pocket.
I was reading about all the regulations around prop money recently — it’s a fragile balance.
5:00 PM · Oct 5, 2021
10 Reposts · 546 Likes
Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion
1/One reason I'm so happy about the popularity of South Korean stuff in America is that I think it'll help Americans become less provincial.
One of my big theses is that most Americans barely even realize that other countries exist, and need to get out more.
10:34 PM · Oct 5, 2021
72 Reposts · 648 Likes
Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion
2/In this regard, the South Korean wave is very different from the Japanese entertainment products that Americans like. Those products are mostly fantasy stuff -- cartoons, comics, video games...
10:35 PM · Oct 5, 2021
6 Reposts · 100 Likes
Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion
6/So Korean media products are teaching Americans that there's a world out there beyond America -- a world with its own problems, to be sure, but a world that's different from what Americans might otherwise have assumed was universal.
10:41 PM · Oct 5, 2021
6 Reposts · 85 Likes
Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion
9/I sometimes worry that America has become something along the lines of Ming Dynasty China -- a country so huge, so rich, and so secure that we start to think our country is the whole world, and thus ignore important developments beyond our borders.
10:45 PM · Oct 5, 2021
10 Reposts · 168 Likes
Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion
Actually, Korea's model of capitalism is very different from that of the U.S. Before accounting for taxes and transfers, South Korea has the lowest Gini coefficient of any country in the OECD -- lower than Sweden or Denmark.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c…
MTP @tsengputterman
Kinda meta how U.S. audiences have been heaping praise on South Korean film & TV critiquing SK hypercapitalism without any apparent awareness or reflection of how their country has helped build said hypercapitalism through war, occupation, militarization, structural adjustment
9:55 PM · Oct 5, 2021
25 Reposts · 303 Likes
Zach Klein@zachklein
This is one of the most interesting projects in SF.
A large shopping mall is proposing to replace its 27 acres of surface parking with 2,900 new housing units and a new 'main street' with street level retail.
Not sexy, but less surface parking and more housing. I'll take it.
9:47 PM · Oct 5, 2021
84 Reposts · 777 Likes
Neoliberal 🌐@ne0liberal
This is incredibly disappointing.
Republicans are going to attack Democrats on LAWLESS OPEN BORDERS no matter what Democrats do. We might as well *do the right thing* and allow more immigration.
𝚁𝚎𝚋𝚎𝚌𝚌𝚊 𝙱𝚎𝚒𝚝𝚜𝚌𝚑 @RebeccaBeitsch
New: The Biden administration resettled 11,455 refugees by the close of the fiscal year that ended Friday, according to data reviewed by The Hill, failing to meet the previous lowpoint of 11,814 set under Trump’s last year in office. https://t.co/V2SIztdCNa
8:44 PM · Oct 5, 2021
53 Reposts · 375 Likes