bob avakian acid tabs

Quick takes on the new Cuba sanctions EO out today: 1. The new Cuba sanctions are potentially very broad. Basically any non-U.S. person or company doing any business in/with Cuba could be sanctioned. Initial focuses are businesses involved in the energy, defense, mining, finance, and security sectors, but these can be expanded. 2. In many respects, the new EO resembles EO 14024 from 2021, which created a broad authority to sanction Russia. (As a partial drafter of that EO, it is interesting to see some of the provisions carried over here). 3. Most designations will be status-based, e.g., "operated in X sector," or "is a Cuban official," rather than requiring the government to prove specific conduct, though there are also conduct-related designations, for, eg, corruption. 4. The EO puts the State Department in the lead for making sanctions designations. Trump expanded State's role in sanctions designations during his first term, and this is consistent with that, as well as with Rubio's interest in Cuba. (State has long had a role in specific sanctions designations, and a critical policy and diplomatic role on all sanctions, but Trump expanded the designations authorities given to State). 5. The EO gives the Trump Administration a fair amount of easy-to-deploy firepower to drive remaining international businesses out of Cuba. The questions will be in implementation. For example, will Trump sanction a Chinese firm installing renewable energy in Cuba? (Cuban renewables have been growing given the oil crisis).

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The Southern California city of Westminster has officially installed "Charlie Kirk Way" signs to honor the late conservative activist.

🚨 BREAKING: Keir Starmer is booed by Jewish people as he arrives near the Golders Green terror attack scene 🎥 Paul Brand

I actually find it really easy to not apply for roles at defense contractors

I actually find it really easy to not apply for roles at defense contractors

chinese tourists are s tier tourists they travel to the most niche cities ever

Very pleased to see this paper! The Mosler-Cantillon-Menger Synthesis: A Complete Theory of the Price Level

🚨BREAKING: Two researchers from UPenn and Boston University just published a paper that should be uncomfortable reading for every CEO automating their workforce right now. The argument is straightforward. Every company replacing workers with AI is also eliminating its own future customers. Laid off workers stop spending. Enough of them stop spending and nobody can afford to buy anything. The companies that fired everyone end up selling into an economy with no purchasing power left. Every executive can see this. The math is not complicated. But here is why nobody stops. If you do not automate, your competitor does. They cut costs, lower prices, take your market share, and you collapse anyway. So every company automates knowing it is collectively destructive because the alternative is dying alone while everyone else survives. The researchers proved this is a Prisoner's Dilemma playing out in real time. The numbers are already moving. Block cut nearly half its 10,000 employees this year. Jack Dorsey said AI made those roles unnecessary and that within the next year the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion. Salesforce replaced 4,000 customer support agents with AI. Goldman Sachs deployed a coding tool that lets one engineer do the work of five. Over 100,000 tech workers were laid off in 2025 and AI was cited as the primary driver in more than half those cases. 80% of US workers hold jobs with tasks susceptible to AI automation. The researchers tested every proposed solution. Universal basic income does not change a single company's incentive to automate. Capital income taxes adjust profit levels but not the per-task decision to replace a human. Collective bargaining cannot hold because automating is always the dominant strategy. They also identified what they call a Red Queen effect. Better AI does not solve the problem, it accelerates it. Every company chases faster automation to gain market share over rivals but at the end everyone has automated equally, the gains cancel out, and the only thing left is more destroyed demand. The one thing the math says could work is a Pigouvian automation tax. A per-task charge that forces companies to account for the demand they destroy each time they replace a worker. The conclusion is that this is not a transfer of wealth from workers to owners. Both sides lose. Workers lose income. Companies lose customers. It is a deadweight loss with no market mechanism to stop it on its own.

One of my favorite failed startups is this ebike company that literally tried to reinvent the wheel

86% of NYC-DSA members (over 3,000!) vote to re-endorse AOC.

Jared Leto's voice for Skeletor in ‘MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE’ has been revealed.

I don't think people understand the gravity of the situation as the UN is preparing for possible nuclear weapon use in Iran. This is a picture of Tehran. For you uneducated, untraveled, never-served, warhawks licking your chops at the thought of bombing it. It's not some low population desert. There are families, children, family pets. Regular working class people with dreams. You're sick to want war. Tehran is a city of nearly 10,000,000 people. Imagine nuking Washington, Berlin, Paris, London, or beyond, bombed with nuclear weapons. I gave up my diplomatic career to leak this information. I suspended my duties so as not to be part of or a witness to this crime against humanity, in an attempt to prevent a nuclear winter before it is too late. Yesterday, nearly ten million people protested “No Kings” in the United States. The possibility of the use of nuclear weapons must be taken very seriously. It's dangerous. Act now. Spread this message worldwide. Take the streets. Protest for our humanity and future. Only the people can stop it. History will remember us.