anyone else in JVM land find sonatype behaving weirdly this afternoon? atm https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/mchange/c3p0/ still doesn't show an 0.11.0 release from almost three hours ago. but oddly, as of a few minutes ago, https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/mchange/c3p0/0.11.0/c3p0-0.11.0.pom is served, even though the apparent directory index won't show or serve its parent directory.
@light @digby ( i have some sympathy for the complaint. but i have no sympathy for choosing or accepting or apologizing for or tolerating the "remedy". ) https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/06/09/authority-minimization/index.html
"Standing alone, Trump’s executive orders represent a serious threat to the First Amendment. But the orders are backed by agency enforcement powers that drastically expand the danger... What we have seen in the early days of Trump 2.0 is an unprecedented government-wide and society-wide broadside against fundamental First Amendment commitments. And there is no indication that the Trump administration’s campaign is going to end any time soon." https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/ronald-kl-collins-first-amendment-news/executive-watch-breadth-and-depth-trump ht @light
There are good reasons to consider industrial policy that some might deride as “protectionist”.
There are no good reasons for Trump’s combination of chaotic tariffs and smothering government, which can’t possibly deliver good industrial policy.
cf @jwmason https://jwmason.org/slackwire/at-barrons-trumps-tariffs-dont-offer-an-alternative-to-free-trade/
“Donald Trump could not care less about ‘promoting freedom and combatting tyranny.’ In fact, he’s more interested in the opposite: promoting tyranny and combatting freedom.” @digby https://digbysblog.net/2025/04/23/soft-power-is-dead/
// from a depressing piece on the state of the state department
@admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org the contemporary Catholic church is a hierarchy, but not an autocracy. it is incapable of coercing even its adherents, let alone the rest of us.
yes, it’s the identity of the new hierarch that will send a signal.
it's weird how the catholic church now has a moment when it has to decide whether it wants to accommodate or pointedly resist a global trend toward authoritarianism.
“Beneath his facade of talking about healthy living and wellness, Kennedy is actually a eugenicist. He insists that viruses and bacteria only kill people who don’t eat healthy and exercise by his lights—essentially rejecting the germ theory of disease.” @ryanlcooper https://prospect.org/health/2025-04-23-trump-administration-objectively-pro-cancer/
remember when we were a confident, generous, hopeful country?
under bukele it is starting to seem like "el salvador" was ironically named.
so, we are living under a fascist administration, but at least this is legal.
Sandwich board advertising “THC SLUSHY”
@light I don’t think that can be done. I mean, in general we do want to go for “the public chooses ends, experts define means”. but “the public” is too inchoate a creature to reliably choose ends, what it says depends upon the institutions and other particulars of how you ask. so we have to constitute an abstraction of the public more coherent and consistent than the latest outrage. Which is, eg, the role of a legislature, and the motivation often for bicameralism. 1/
@light Which is why it’s a profound catastrophe that our legislature is functioning so poorly. Legislatures are our main institution for both meaningfully constituting and representing the public, but doing so with some coherence and constancy. Our constitution wisely makes the legislature supreme in power. But if it fails to function, our system suffers a kind of brain death. /fin
@light institutions. like our bicameral legislature. our independent courts. and yes, our executive agencies, by putting up more or less resistance to sharp turns based on their judgment and experience of the domain. of course, with consensus or persistence, the public can impose any signal above all of these.
"since JFK and especially since Carter/Reagan, the US has been losing its ability to tax the rich. It has increasingly chosen to tax the rest of the world, moving industry, in particular, to other countries. Those countries made what the US needed, and sold it to them in US dollars" @ianwelsh https://www.ianwelsh.net/the-proximate-cause-of-revolutions-is-inability-to-tax-the-us-is-losing-that/
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego Some changes are good, and some changes are bad. Some good changes can be made quickly. In social affairs, most changes should be made over time, because people with real lives and plans have to adjust to them, will be hurt — badly, seriously, sometimes fatally — by abrupt unexpected changes. In a democracy, you have to actually persuade people that the course you’ve set is good, if it is to endure. 1/
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego (That last, actually, is my biggest critique of Biden’s industrial policy. He did good things that were off to a good start! But he inadequately promoted those good things, and inadequately educated the public about their deliberate, not-so-quick time tables. So, after an election, all his genuinely sprouting seeds are getting ripped to shreds.) /fin
@realcaseyrollins @Phil @diego There’s no such thing as a “tariff deficit”. Pre-Trump formal tariffs were very low in both directions among developed countries, but the US ran a large trade deficit.
Working to balance the overall deficit, carefully and over time, would have been wise policy. Balancing *individual, bilateral* deficits is just stupid, let alone trying to do it so abruptly.
@realcaseyrollins @Phil @diego Do you think Europeans do not perceive the US as bullying? Again, it’s ordinary that interacting with governments, especially foreign governments, is difficult, businesses resent it, and always perceive, often not wrongly, discrimination in favor of the home team. 1/
@realcaseyrollins @Phil @diego But I don’t think US tech giants, which dominate European markets and use Ireland to avoid most US taxes, have been so hard done. /fin
@realcaseyrollins @Phil @diego Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” do not offset actual tariffs. Those “tariffs” do not exist. They assume that a bilateral trade deficit is ipso facto evidence of non-tariff barriers, and use a miscomputation to offset the combination of (usually very small) formal tariffs and the hypothetical non-tariff barriers they’ve deduced. 1/
@realcaseyrollins @Phil @diego The computation is structured not to replicate others tariffs, but to discern the rate which, under some probably incorrect assumptions and with almost definitely incorrect inputs, would push each bilateral relationship to balance. (Note: This is for the now-suspended “reciprocal tariffs”.) /fin
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego i don’t have the wealth to make bets on such a scale. the Bryan Caplans of the world usually stick with $100.
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego I participate in financial markets to put money on my views. Unsurprisingly, I’m short US equities, long foreign currencies, and long gold atm. Lower equities and a weak dollar might have been good developments, if the means of achieving them had not been so destructive. I don’t think I’m interested in making Bryan Caplan style interpersonal bets.