Chris Lesiter

Brookfield Mortgage REIT has maintained the same distribution of 6¢ per month since May 2022. Over the same time the NAV has declined from $13.86 to $10.37. Income gain of $2.76 v. NAV loss of $3.49. All figures USD and before inflation. Not Financial Advice.

@james_j_bailey There was an episode of Million Dollars Rooms where someone had recreated Bourbon Street in their basement.

I’m once again thinking about how Barbra Streisand saw fit to install an entire DICKENSIAN STREET, including several fully-staffed ‘shops’, in the basement of her house, to show off her favourite antiques.

@mattyglesias Big families seem to be a thing for conservatives, so they would likely be overrepresented in term of new parents.

This chart poses some interesting questions.

@litcapital What is the split in Waymo preference in men and women? Women might prefer not having a driver, typically male.

Nearly 50,000 people die in the US from car accidents in the US Waymo and self driving cars are much safer than humans driving More Perfect Union would rather have people die than have drivers find other jobs in the modern economy

@JuliaHB1 Will you then ask the Tories and Reform to shut them down?

The breakfasts are not free. They are paid for by taxes - mostly on parents who feed their own kids. Most of these 10,000 children would have had a perfectly healthy breakfast at home without these clubs. This isn't about helping the poorest kids, it's the state taking over the basic job of parenting.

@MiriVinni In her biography, Fifty Million for Faculty and Students, Alice W. Brown wrote about her fundraising work in Appalachia. She said that some of the small colleges she worked with where the biggest employer in town.

Yes, however, the Great College Collapse will not be the grand institutional correction many on the right are salivating over Schools struggling the most are Bible colleges, HBCUs, and remote liberal arts schools that disproportionately prop up rural economies

Tony Abbott appeared at CPAC Hungry. #auspol

@AlecStapp Two key pillars of the Democratic coalition are African Americans (D+75) and unions households (D+15). I honestly thought that given all the coverage, union households were much more likely to vote Democrats. But unions include both Teachers and Teamsters.

Private-sector unionization in the US was a temporary mid-20th century phenomenon:

Guess who is advertising on the Morning Star website? Their motto is "For Peace and Socialism". It's the @NEUnion: morningstaronline.co.uk/article/your-p…

@PaulSkallas In the UK, starting from Thatcher it's gone 18 years of Tories, 13 years of Labour, 14 years of Tories and now Labour is back in office.

15 years is the upper bound limit for successful political movements in the west. About a generation. That's the amount of time until people get fatigue. Orban, Tories in UK, Merkel and Kohl in Germany, Rutte in Netherlands, John Howard in Australia, Felipe Gonzalez in Spain, MAGA (although that is also self inflicted)

@HighyieldHarry There is a Wikipedia page for US school bus manufacturers. There are 4 types of bus with each manufacturers making 1-3 with manufacturing spread out from California to New York. It's like there trying to compete a bit but not too much.

Really nutty how much consolidation there's been in Ambulance industry, great piece below

@asymmetricinfo In 2020 Biden won the Union vote by 15 compared to Asian Americans by 27. And when do the democrats ever talk about Asian Americans? Whereas with Unions, it's fairly frequent.

The UAW flatly didn’t believe GM was heading for insolvency even though they had access to audited public financial statements that showed it was becoming arithmetically inevitable

@MrDanielBuck Once did a property management course. One person was a was a public housing tenant solely there so she could keep her property manager in their place. She was constantly rude and during one lesson, the lecturer laid down the law to her.

“One student made 25 other students have a worse experience” Mercy to the cruel is cruelty to the innocent

@technopopulist Join a political early, become involved in the University political club, then it straight into a researcher position with a backbencher then become a SpAd before 30 and onward inevitably to becoming an MP and maybe even a Minister. Andy Burnham joined Labour 41 years ago.

One of the most bizarre pipelines in British politics is the Oxbridge posh-boy network. You see the same traits again and again: the slick hair, the extraordinary levels of self-confidence, and the bluffer’s vocabulary(‘optimal’, ‘suboptimal’, ‘covenant’, blah blah blah) deployed with total assurance. They are one of the biggest barriers to meritocracy in this country, and to actually sorting out the problems we face. They are almost never properly scrutinised. When they are, it tends to be by others cut from the same cloth, speaking the same language, playing the same game, etc. etc.. And that, in many ways, is the problem

Does he think is it OK for Civil Servants from other countries to visit the UK? Or is that "different"?

@abcsport The two WA clubs are both owned by the WA Football Commission who appoint all the directors. It is strange in this day and age they can't be democratically elected. What's even stranger is that absolutely no one here in Perth is willing to dispute this.

Vic bias … have Victorians changed much?😅 40 years ago, the West Coast Eagles were founded. Five years later, on the cusp of a home final, the perception of some footy fans of an interstate AFL final was met with anger. Hear the AFL on ABC listen: abc.net.au/listen/listena…

@DPJHodges On Brexit each side one big weakness and one big strength. For Remainers the strength was the economy, and the weakness was free movement. For Brexiteers it was the reverse.

Going to say it again. No.10 can spin as much as they like. The EU will not agree to major realignment unless the UK agrees to allow free movement. The fundamentals are no different than they were under Cameron, May, Johnson or Sunak.

Do the Murdoch Family ask for shareholder approval for all the travelling they bill shareholders for? Or do you think they should?

@BenedictSpence It's like the journalists hanging around MPs home for a brief, unmemorable comment. Imagine getting a big student debt to report on someone putting out the bin.

I’m no fan of Starmer, but the PM should be allowed to go on holiday. Indeed, given the high-stress nature of the job, he should probably get more holiday than almost anyone else. And four stars is not luxury, Christ alive.

@martinabettt How many tickets? What percentage of the total number of ticket year? And how does the cost compare to Triple Lock?

NEW: Some of Britain’s war museum sites are offering £3 tickets to benefits claimants - while troops and veterans are left paying full price. Labour MP Luke Charters said: “If our servicepeople are willing to put everything on the line for Britain, the very least our museums can do is give them a discount.” thesun.co.uk/news/38785259/…

@DanFriedman81 UK food delivery rider Youtuber LondonEats has had a few videos discussing how in the UK at least, Uber requires riders to submit a facial scan randomly during their shifts. That is because people were renting accounts and the scooters as well. A complete ecosystem in action.

The New York Times has an article examining how a Nepalese Uber driver named Anup Baniya supports a family on $25k take-home pay. Midway down the article, we learn a shocking fact: Baniya pays $2,400 per month to rent a Toyata RAV4 hybrid SUV. A new RAV4 costs around $32,000 for a base model. The monthly payment on a 60 month financing plan is $629. So why is this guy paying four times that? Because NYC caps the number of licenses it grants for for-hire vehicles, so people with the licenses rent out their cars and plates to people who don't have them for hundreds of dollars per week. But why would anyone take such an arrangement? Why would Baniya pay $30k in overhead to earn $25k? Why doesn't he just walk into a McDonald's and ask for an application? Hourly fast-food workers earn about $40k per year in NYC. According to the article, Baniya drives under this arrangement because he likes being able to choose his own hours, though he complains about the impact of sedentary 10 hour driving shifts on his health. But if you find that unpersuasive, another possible reason someone might work under such an arrangement could be that his legal status bars him from other work (the article does not say whether Baniya is legally allowed to work in the US). Platforms like Uber require drivers to provide Social Security Numbers to set up a driver account, but illegal immigrants routinely circumvent this by buying or renting active accounts from other people who are legally allowed to have them. A recent Transunion survey of gig workers found that 45% of respondents had rented out or sold access to an account. The article mentions "a recent tax return," but that doesn't mean Baniya is here legally. Illegal immigrants in New York file tax returns under ITINs, which enables them to get refunds for taxes withheld, as well as qualify for public subsidies on health insurance and childcare. Illegal immigrants who file this way are protected from immigration enforcement by New York's sanctuary law.