Stephen Clively

@worstall Correct. And history shows (see Phil Magness) that their numbers can’t be trusted

Fun proof that Laddie's not doing economics here, rather politics. But then some of us have been saying this already.....

@BasedMikeLee Running Reagan and Trump in the same category is a monstrous abuse of history

FDR dangerously undermined the Constitution by deliberately weakening the Constitution’s twin structural protections: federalism and separation of powers Calling him the GOAT president is blasphemy

@NeedlesslyWordy @melfmaster @cafreiman Also a step backwards and less meaningful to compare a flow (expenditure) with a stock (wealth) rather than with another flow (income).

@melfmaster @cafreiman They used disposable income that seems fine.

Counterpoint:

@shallit43 @mattwridley @DailyMail @theCCCuk Ridley has declared his interests in interviews many times over the years.

@mattwridley @DailyMail @theCCCuk As opposed to coal-mine-owner Matt Ridley, who clearly has no vested interests at all! The lack of self-awareness is truly astonishing here.

In my @DailyMail essay on the @theCCCuk's new report, I point out that they have a vested interest in exaggeration. "Between the moment when these climatecrats wake in the morning and the moment they lay their overworked brains to rest on feather pillows at night, they have one all-consuming ambition: to maximise their own budget. They achieve this goal by being as alarmist as possible. Imagine if they found evidence that climate change was no big deal or even good news: would they want to publish this? Of course not. It would be disastrous for their (taxpayer-funded) income. The committee has never produced a report on global greening: the remarkable 15-20 per cent increase in green vegetation on the planet over the past four decades, caused mostly by carbon dioxide emissions. Nor do its members talk about falling deaths from cold weather anywhere near as much as they do about the smaller number of deaths from hot weather. Good news for us, in short, is no news for them.

@HeidiBachram These are very small people

Pro-Pals went into a Black Sheep cafe and yelled through a megaphone that it was a “Zionist cafe” and the coffee was “Palestinian blood”. Just because the cofounder is Jewish and was once in the World Jewish Congress. Nasty antisemites.

@thinkaboutglue @s8mb @bswud I see what you mean about the socialist realism style.

@thinkaboutglue @s8mb @bswud Good lord

Sculpture is what separates beautiful Victorian cast-iron drinking fountains from the cheap plastic ones built today, and what makes ornamented buildings of the past so enthralling. In a sense, a medieval cathedral IS a giant sculpture. And, more than any other art form, sculpture is shaped by engineering and economics. BUT: sculptures today are often crude and simplistic, and the craft has been in decline for decades. Because it requires such a complicated set of skills, and modern art colleges focus far more on art criticism instead of training, sculpture is dying. In this week's Works in Progress podcast, @thinkaboutglue and @SCP_Hughes joined me to talk about things like: - Why the only country that could build the sculpture park that the Trump Administration wants is... North Korea, - How sculpture was industrialised in Antiquity, revived by Renaissance goldsmiths, and how mass production has been the norm for centuries, - Why the best figurative sculptors are found in Hollywood prop shops, - How Hindu temples kept alive a sculptural tradition the West lost, - And whether we need an advanced market commitment for beauty. Listen now, and let us know what you think! Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/6Sx3lQ… Youtube: youtu.be/DQGgJvinpuE Apple: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/whe…

@s8mb @bswud @thinkaboutglue I am just listening to the podcast now - six minutes to go! That North Korea sculpting bit was eye opening. Good chat.

@bswud @thinkaboutglue Same here! What a star.

@KenLeegbg @CalMEurofan er, no

@CalMEurofan He represents death and destruction, the slaughter of babies, ethnic cleansing and much more. Israel equals genocide from now on!

It’s so refreshing to see this year’s Eurovision artists actually treating the Israeli participant like a human being deserving of love and respect. Noam is not the government, he’s a person living out his dream. Certain people should take notes.

@devinlavelle @jmhorp The cost of building something (construction jobs and other inputs) is a terrible metric of what a business is bringing to any area. The value is from the output from the thing that is built. That this value is not necessarily local gives rise to the policy problem.

@jmhorp But it's a pretty good metric for the value a business is bringing to a local area, especially if it's owned by a non-local corporation that's sending its profits elsewhere.

The number of permanent jobs created by new construction is a terrible metric for whether something should be allowed. By that logic, we should never build any new housing!

@SpeechFuture @reason @nickgillespie Just listened to the interview a couple of hours ago. Excellent. I have your book on order.

"It's insane." The EU government has launched a new app that lets people verify their identities to use social media. In a @reason interview with @nickgillespie, Jeff Kosseff asks: Would you really want to upload your ID to the government in order to post online?

@KeanosD @BrianMcWilliams @FightWithMemes @benkane1077 Happens all the time

@BrianMcWilliams @FightWithMemes @benkane1077 Maybe they were forced to park like that because a car that was already there had parked like a cunt.

What an absolute psychopath.🤨

@EZorreras Ent or triffid? Never trust a triffid

Hoy me he parao a echar una meadilla cerca del bosque de Fargorn camino de Almería y he visto un Ent. Así, con dos cojones.

@inquisitive_rat @wethefifth @sapinker He writes and works directly to tackle irrationality and postmodernism

@wethefifth @sapinker He does works and seem to defend in ground zero of this spiral correct ?

The spiral of silence may explain more about public opinion than ideology does. Steven Pinker (@sapinker) joins us on the new Fifth Column, out now.

@PaisleyJnr @Glinner “make dogs rape them also.” Say that one aloud to yourself and realise what a dupe you sound like.

@Glinner And where they rape prisoners and make dogs rape them also. You keep weird company Graham. What happened to you? You had it all and lost everything. Nobody to blame but yourself.

Let's hear it for the only country in the Middle East with gay rights!

@cjsnowdon @s8mb Chortle

@s8mb Abolition of grammar schools

The trouble with fixing Britain's shambolic politics is that there are too many plausible explanations for what has happened. I don't think it can just be bad luck. Britain has had five in a row of the most unsuited people in its history as Prime Minister, with a sixth almost certainly on the way. (I would like to be wrong.) Is it institutional sclerosis in the British state binding their hands, and putting off more capable people from the job? Is it bad conditions and pay for MPs creating a shallow talent pool? Is it post-financial crisis scepticism about capitalism and economics, and fading memories of the 20th Century's mistakes? Is it weak economic growth encouraging zero-sum politics? Is the media environment rewarding charlatans? Is it social media making backbenchers harder to control, or party memberships harder to ignore? I genuinely don't know which of these are the strongest hypotheses. How can we even begin to fix the problem when we don't even know what its causes are?

@charlescwcooke The Queen to Alice: 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

As Trump has explained, tariffs don’t raise prices and are paid by foreigners, which is why [checks notes] suspending or removing them lowers prices and makes things more affordable.

@Pott_Shrigley_ @OurWorldInData It shouldn’t be surprising. Trouble is most social scientists are wedded to the Easterlin Paradox and insist that above some level of income happiness does not increase with income. That view is wrong.

@OurWorldInData Hardly surprising.

People in richer countries tend to say they are more satisfied with their lives— Putting a number on “happiness” is hard. But one way to better understand how satisfied people are with their lives is to ask them. Self-reported life satisfaction is one key metric that researchers rely on. Respondents are asked to rate their lives on a 10-step ladder, where 0 represents the worst possible life, and 10 is the best. The chart shows self-reported life satisfaction measured against gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. The two are positively correlated: people in richer countries tend to be more satisfied with their lives. Of course, income is not the only thing that matters. You can also see the large spread of values for countries with similar levels of GDP per capita. For example, South American countries tend to have higher happiness levels than those in other regions. (This Daily Data Insight was written by @_HannahRitchie.)

@SteveSkojec And, helpfully, the other guy landed in the disabled parking spot

As an unusually large man, I can tell you that putting your mass into a shoulder check like this is one of the most satisfying things you can do. Yellow shirt guy will be smiling every time he thinks about this for the rest of his life x.com/SteveInmanClip…

@SuggettWayne @wethefifth @DavidAFrench @dopequeenpheebs and, like, a really nice person

@wethefifth @DavidAFrench @dopequeenpheebs This woman seems stable.

Reactions to our @DavidAFrench interview included @dopequeenpheebs screaming that he's the wrong kind of white person. For adopting a child from Ethiopia, and speaking honestly about what it taught him about racism. This is what happens when politics becomes competitive hatred.