Alan Pascoe

@trwsenti You need a TV licence only if you watch scheduled programming. Do the videos you watch start at a specific time? You need a licence. Do the videos you watch start when you choose? You don’t need a licence.

Today, a grand jury in Alabama returned an 11-count indictment charging the Southern Poverty Law Center with wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. @splcenter stands accused of manufacturing and creating the very extremism it purports to oppose. Instead of dismantling extremism, @splcenter was funding it. I would like to thank our partners from @USAO_MDAL and @FBI for their incredible efforts in bringing this case. Today is just the beginning, stay tuned.

“The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant…. His culture is based on ‘I am not too sure.’” - H.L. Mencken 🧐

I started out as a communist.  I genuinely believed capitalism was the problem and communism was the best chance the poor had. Then I tried to start a business in Senegal and in America at the same time. The difference broke something open in me. I followed the evidence wherever it led, and when I came out the other side, I told my friends what I'd found. I lost 90% of them.  Not one of them told me I was wrong. They just stopped talking to me.

🇮🇷 BREAKING! Iran Pulls Out of Wednesday Islamabad Talks — Tasnim News Iran has formally notified the United States through Pakistani mediators that it will not attend Wednesday's scheduled negotiations in Islamabad, with no timeline set for future rounds, according to Tasnim News Agency. The decision follows what Tehran describes as a pattern of American bad faith since the ceasefire framework was agreed upon. According to Tasnim's sources, Iran accepted a ceasefire and subsequent negotiations based on a 10-point framework it submitted — which Washington formally accepted through Pakistani intermediaries. However, the U.S. almost immediately began walking back its commitments. First, Washington failed to pressure Israel into implementing the Lebanon ceasefire as agreed — stalling talks for several days. Then, during the first Islamabad round, the U.S. introduced demands that far exceeded the original framework, effectively torpedoing the negotiations. Tehran's assessment: having failed on the battlefield, Washington was trying to compensate through maximalist demands at the table. Iran subsequently issued a firm warning of missile strikes on Israel, which Tasnim says forced the U.S. to finally operationalize the Lebanon ceasefire. Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi then announced Tehran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping in line with the initial framework — only for the U.S. to continue its naval blockade regardless. Recent message exchanges produced no meaningful progress, with Washington refusing to retreat from demands Tehran considers violations of Iran's sovereign rights. Iran has now concluded that returning to talks under these conditions would be a waste of time, as the U.S. is blocking any viable agreement. The decision has been communicated to Washington via Islamabad.

The War of 1812 has a certain irony: America picks a fight while Britain’s occupied with the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, with a nakedly opportunistic landgrab in Canada - only for Napoleon Bonaparte to blunder into Russia at the exact same moment and start his inevitable defeat. By the time Napoleon comes back for the Hundred Days, the whole North American war is already wrapping up - having achieved, essentially, nothing.

@AlanRMacLeod Or did she learn through experience?

"I switched my opinion as soon as my class interests changed"

@peterrhague We have become accustomed to the idea that there is an intrinsic price for a item.

British people have a weird and moralistic relationship with prices. Market equilibrium doesn’t mean anything to a lot of us. What buyers are willing to pay and sellers are willing to offer are irrelevant. There is a belief in a “real” price based on what you think you deserve.

@cochranereturns @theipaper There is no such thing as a dead market. If she reduces her price sufficiently, she will find a buyer.

@theipaper Lots of rather unfair comments below given: "I ... dropped the price from £860,000 to £750,000 six months ago ... and since then, the only viewer who expressed interest in making an offer has been unable to sell their own home." The issue is the market is dead.

At 70, I’m trapped in my £850,000 family house – I can’t sell it trib.al/x2Wccm6

every dollar taxed is a dollar that cannot be invested in business expansion, job creation, or innovation. the question isn't whether the rich should pay their fair share the question is whether government spending generates more value than private investment history answers clearly

Individuals > Collectives

Surprising amount of charity is of this kind. My ex, Tess, and I used to give to Koala Rescue. Years later, I found that they just sort of assign you a random ~bear that lives outdoors. Hundreds of people have the same one. Your money doesn't buy it food (they only eat one thing), but rather goes to support various green causes. Etc.

The strange and disturbing things you find in the historical literature... For example, over 150 years ago, Dr. Schieferdecker wrote how repeatedly cutting someone’s arm with a lancet (a sharp medical instrument) and inserting pus from an unknown source (typically from a cow, a horse, a buffalo, or someone who had or died from smallpox passed through an animal) caused sickness and death. Who would have thought? “This systematic poisoning of our race is done in the name of science; and the vast army of physicians, who ought to protect the public health, are the agents authorized to spread a malignant virus through the world. Not content with infecting the blood of the adult and the aged, they take the helpless infant from its mother’s breast, and, with the lancet, transplant a virus, concentrated by disease, into its pure blood, and thus compel it to contend for the rest of its life with diseases which it otherwise would probably never have known. This method of wholesale devastation, which sends thousands annually to premature graves, which shocks no one, which the law encourages instead of punishing, is called ‘Vaccination.’” — C. C. Schieferdecker, MD [Dr. Schieferdecker, MD, Horrors of Vaccination, 1870, New York, pp. 39, 43.]

🇮🇷🇨🇳⚔️🇺🇸An Unpleasant Surprise for the American blockade A new player on the field: online sources report that China's leadership has sent three ships to the Gulf of Oman to ensure passage of its merchant vessels through the American blockade. Previously, a task force consisting of the guided-missile destroyer "Tanshan," the frigate "Daqing" and the supply ship "Taihu" was located in the Gulf of Aden. Now, according to insider reports, the ships have already relocated to the Gulf of Oman. There are reasons to believe this. China's authorities are no less interested than others in normalizing shipping in general and importing Iranian oil in particular. Moreover, the task force was stationed relatively nearby, and could well have been tasked with such a mission. If this is accurate, it will be interesting to see how the Americans react. Engaging in direct confrontation with China is not the same as seizing an unarmed tanker. rybar

Denmark is held up as proof a fossil grid can be replaced. But electricity prices have more than doubled since 2000. Moreover, the majority of what is labelled "renewable" is actually biomass. That is, wood. Trees are cut, often abroad, compressed into pellets, shipped in and then burnt for power. At the smokestack, more CO2 is released than just simply burning gas. But it is labelled as "green" because the emissions are not counted at the power plant - they are 1) assigned to the country where the trees were cut, and 2) assumed to be reabsorbed by future regrowth. So the system works like this: Cut trees. Burn them. Emit CO2. Call it clean. Laughably, 64% of Denmark's renewable energy comes from this process.

A major gas field in the UK could supply over 10% of the UK's energy, but that gas isn't destined for the grid. The plan instead is to extract it on site, burn it in a local power plant, and use that electricity to mine bitcoin. The energy will be consumed at the source, because that route is simpler and more profitable. Taxes, regulation and grid constraints all add friction. The gas could power homes. It isn't. Because burning it on site makes more money. That is a damning indictment of UK energy policy.

Bastiat. ✍🏻

@BBCNews Does it ban smoking, or does it ban tabacco purchases? What is there to prevent someone who can buy tabacco, giving (not selling) it to someone who can’t?

Smoking ban for people born after 2008 in the UK agreed bbc.in/4cEfrbq

What problem do we have that this solves?

I read in the Telegraph that Morrisons have sacked a manager for tackling a shoplifter. Honestly, if a shoplifter gets a bit roughed up and takes a kick whilst being stopped by a decent law-abiding citizen? Oh well. I couldn't care less. Morrisons should be ashamed.

Sweden's socialist experiment collapsed so spectacularly in the 1990s that even the Social Democrats had to abandon their own system and embrace free markets. By 1990, Sweden faced a full-blown economic crisis. Government spending had ballooned to 67% of GDP. Marginal tax rates hit 102% (literally paying the state to work). Public debt exploded. The banking system collapsed under the weight of government-directed credit allocation. Unemployment skyrocketed to 12%. The Swedish model had delivered exactly what free market economists predicted: economic stagnation, capital flight, and fiscal collapse. The government had no choice but to deregulate. They privatized telecommunications, postal services, railways, and electricity. They abolished exchange controls and financial market regulations. They cut government spending from 67% to 49% of GDP. They reduced the top marginal tax rate from 87% to 57%. They opened domestic markets to foreign competition and eliminated price controls across entire sectors. The results were immediate and undeniable. GDP growth accelerated from near-zero to 4% annually through the late 1990s. Unemployment plummeted to 4% by 2000. Productivity surged as companies like Ericsson and Volvo competed globally without government interference. Swedish startups like Skype and Spotify emerged from the newly liberalized economy. Foreign investment flooded back as Sweden transformed from socialist basket case to competitive market economy. Capitalism worked once Sweden removed socialist barriers to growth and competition. Yet, today it is paraded as a socialist success story😂.