The Liberty Pear

The Latino Vote Podcast: Republicans Under Pressure in Battleground Seats (Video)

2026-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

The Latino Vote Podcast is back breaking down the latest 2026 midterm polling — new data on Latino voters, Republicans under pressure in battleground seats, and where the map is actually moving.

Two things to listen for specifically:

Anti-institutionalism — how deep the distrust of all institutions runs right now, on both sides.
Dealignment, not realignment — voters aren’t switching teams so much as walking away from teams altogether.

There’s some things in here I do not fully agree with — but it’s a good one!

Movies That Make You Think — Part 33

2026-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 33

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

Four nights gone wrong: a small-town bag of cash, an all-night race against eviction, a kidnapping that reopens an old case, and a freelancer who treats other people’s tragedies as inventory.

Greedy People (Hulu)

A rookie cop’s first day in a sleepy island town goes sideways when his reckless partner’s bad call leaves a woman dead and a bag of cash up for grabs. Himesh Patel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt anchor a dark comedy where nearly everyone turns out to be one payday away from something ugly, and the body count climbs in proportion to the greed.

Night Always Comes (Netflix)

Lynette has one night to raise $25,000 before her family loses the only home they can afford in a city being priced out from under them. Vanessa Kirby drives a thriller that plays like a tour of American precarity, where every favor, scam, and humiliation gets measured against what a person owes her family — and herself.

The Whisper Man (Netflix)

When widowed Tom’s young son vanishes, the abduction echoes an old serial-killer case — the one his estranged father, a retired detective, put away years ago. Adam Scott and Robert De Niro turn a kidnapping thriller into a story about grief, damaged fathers and sons, and the fear that the worst things run in the family.

Nightcrawler (Netflix)

Lou Bloom parlays a police scanner and a cheap camcorder into a career filming LA’s bloodiest nights for a ratings-hungry news producer — then starts improving the footage. Jake Gyllenhaal’s hollow-eyed stringer is the logical endpoint of “if it bleeds, it leads”: an economy that pays for spectacle and never asks who got hurt producing it.

See all movie lists →

James Talarico on The Breakfast Club: The Texas Senate Race (Video)

2026-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

James Talarico sits down with The Breakfast Club to talk about his Texas Senate race against Ken Paxton, the primary against Jasmine Crockett, Black voters and businesses, and more.

This is exactly the kind of room more Democrats should walk into — and Talarico holds his own, talking faith, populism, and corruption in plain language instead of consultant-speak. Worth a watch if you want to understand why this race is suddenly competitive.

I Endorse Troy Jackson for U.S. Senate (Maine)

2026-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

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I’m endorsing Troy Jackson for U.S. Senate in Maine.

Troy is a fifth-generation logger from Allagash, a former Maine Senate President, and Bernie Sanders’ 2016 Maine political director — a guy who punched a clock for 80-hour weeks in the woods before spending twenty years in the legislature fighting for universal school meals, lower prescription drug prices, rural health care, and union jobs, all while winning a district that went for Trump three times.

His agenda is a contract with working Mainers: stop the CMP rate hikes, free child care for working families, a public option, a Department of Housing Affordability, and stopping Wall Street from buying up Maine. It’s exactly the politics to retire Susan Collins once and for all.

I’m proud to endorse Troy Jackson. Please donate, volunteer, and spread the word before November 3.

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I Endorse Gina Hinojosa for Governor of Texas

2026-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer Platform Campaign Site

I’m endorsing Gina Hinojosa for Governor of Texas.

Gina is a state representative, civil rights and union lawyer, former Austin ISD school board president, and a Rio Grande Valley native who got into politics the way more people should: they tried to close her son’s school, so she ran, won, and kept it open.

Her agenda is exactly right for Texas: save public schools by ending the voucher scam, the STAAR test, and state takeovers, pay teachers what they deserve, send every household a $1,500 refund from the hoarded Rainy Day Fund, make data centers pay their own way instead of sticking Texans with the bill, stop private equity from buying up homes, and lower healthcare costs in the state with the most uninsured kids in the country.

After more than a decade of Greg Abbott running Texas for his billionaire donors, the polls show a single-digit race. Texans finally have a real shot at a governor who works for them.

I’m proud to endorse Gina Hinojosa. Please donate, volunteer, and spread the word before November 3.

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Movies That Make You Think — Part 32

2026-08-17T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 32

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

Four stories about secrets coming due: an affair turned into leverage, a murder the police want to file away, a past acquaintance who won’t stay buried, and an assassin who starts asking the wrong questions.

Derailed (Prime Video)

Charles Schine is a commuting ad executive whose strained marriage and mounting bills make a flirtation with Lucinda feel like the one thing going right — until a violent stranger crashes their hotel room and turns the almost-affair into an extortion machine. Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston play it straight and tense, and the movie keeps asking how many compromises a person will make to keep one secret from detonating everything else.

November Criminals (Hulu)

When a classmate is gunned down and the police write it off as gang violence, high school senior Addison starts pulling threads himself, with Phoebe drawn in beside him. Ansel Elgort and Chloë Grace Moretz ground the amateur investigation in grief and adolescent uncertainty, turning a murder mystery into a story about who gets believed and who gets written off.

The Gift (Prime Video)

A young couple’s fresh start in California curdles when Gordo, a figure from Simon’s school days, keeps arriving with wine, koi, and an intimacy that feels slightly wrong. Joel Edgerton writes, directs, and co-stars in a thriller that keeps reassigning your sympathy, asking whether cruelty from the past ever really expires — and what it costs when someone decides it shouldn’t.

Ava (Prime Video)

Ava Faulkner is very good at killing people for a black ops organization, and increasingly bad at not asking why. When one job’s loose ends make her the target, she heads home to Boston and has to fight her own employers while facing the alcoholic mother, fragile sister, and ex-fiancé she left behind. Jessica Chastain carries both halves of the movie: the brutally efficient operative and the daughter who never figured out how to come back.

See all movie lists →

The Latino Vote Podcast: Midterm Races to Watch (Video)

2026-08-07T00:00:00+00:00

The Latino Vote Podcast breaks down the midterm races to watch, insights from Abdul El-Sayed’s success, and other midterm developments so far.

The key insight: a lot of this is not ideological — and there are great moments in here where Mike Madrid identifies exactly that. What it mostly is, in my view, is populism — and that has been the through-line of modern American politics for 10+ years now. That said, some of it is ideological — I’d put the split at maybe 65–35, populism to ideology — but either way, there are some genuinely interesting insights from experienced folks here.

AOC Joins The Majority Report In Studio (Video)

2026-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joins Emma Vigeland and The Majority Report in studio.

Why Political Elites Are Terrified of Abdul El-Sayed (Video)

2026-07-29T00:00:00+00:00

More Perfect Union looks at why Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has political elites terrified.

Volunteer for Abdul Donate My Endorsement of Abdul

Why Latino Trump Voters Are At A Breaking Point

2026-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

More Perfect Union reports on why Latino voters who backed Trump are reaching a breaking point.

Abdul El-Sayed Speaks at the UAW 2026 Constitutional Convention

2026-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

UAW-endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed delivers his speech at the UAW 2026 Constitutional Convention.

Abdul El-Sayed with Elizabeth Warren and Pramila Jayapal

2026-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

Abdul El-Sayed, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Representative Pramila Jayapal come together for a rally in Ferndale, Michigan.

Abdul El-Sayed’s Extended Interview with CBS News

2026-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed speaks with CBS News’s Major Garrett about AI, policing, Israel, Gaza, and more.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Socialism, Politics & NYC

2026-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

Mayor Zohran Mamdani joins Jon Stewart for a wide-ranging conversation about socialism, governing New York City, and the politics shaping his mayoralty.

Zohran Mamdani on Netanyahu, New York, and AOC

2026-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

Mayor Zohran Mamdani discusses Netanyahu, governing New York City, and whether Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should run for president.

Abdul El-Sayed with AOC and Bernie Sanders

2026-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

Abdul El-Sayed, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Senator Bernie Sanders come together for this campaign event.

Great TV Shows - Part 6

2026-07-09T00:00:00+00:00

See Part 1 Here See Part 2 Here See Part 3 Here See Part 4 Here See Part 5 Here You’re viewing Great TV Shows - Part 6

See also: Amazing Movies: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6 • Part 7 • Part 8 • Part 9 • Part 10 • Part 11 • Part 12 • Part 13 • Part 14 • Part 15 • Part 16 • Part 17 • Part 18 • Part 19 • Part 20 • Part 21 • Part 22 • Part 23 • Part 24 • Part 25 • Part 26 • Part 27 • Part 28 • Part 29 • Part 30 • Part 31

Four TV picks: a real juror in a completely fake trial, a blue-collar auto-shop sitcom, a churchgoing affair that turns deadly, and the return of the definitive forensics docuseries.

Jury Duty (Prime Video)

A documentary-style comedy that chronicles an American jury trial through the eyes of juror Ronald Gladden — who has no idea the entire case is fake and everyone except him is an actor.

Tires (Netflix)

At his father’s auto shop, a hapless manager strives to improve customer service and drive profits while keeping his troublemaking cousin (Shane Gillis) in line.

Love & Death (HBO Max)

Two churchgoing couples enjoy their small-town Texas life…until an extramarital affair leads somebody to pick up an axe. A riveting true-crime drama starring Elizabeth Olsen and Jesse Plemons.

Forensic Files II (HBO Max)

Experts piece together clues and microscopic evidence to solve the most puzzling criminal cases, proving there is no such thing as a perfect crime.

See all TV lists →

Movies That Make You Think — Part 31

2026-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 31

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Four pressure tests: a polite reunion that turns into psychological revenge, teenagers chasing a classmate’s murder past the official story, a pilot forced to turn a crash landing into a rescue mission, and a president fighting the clock to turn wartime necessity into constitutional change.

The Gift (Prime Video)

Simon and Robyn’s new life starts to unravel when Gordo, an old acquaintance from Simon’s past, returns with gifts, awkward friendliness, and unfinished history. The thriller keeps shifting the moral ground under its characters, asking how long a buried cruelty can stay buried when the victim refuses to disappear.

November Criminals (Hulu)

After a classmate is murdered, Addison refuses to accept the easy explanation and begins his own investigation with Phoebe beside him. The movie blends grief, teen uncertainty, and amateur detective work into a story about how quickly a search for justice can become obsession.

Plane (Prime Video)

Pilot Brodie Torrance saves his passengers from a storm by landing on a remote island, only to discover the crash was the easy part. With the passengers threatened by armed rebels, he has to trust a prisoner in transit and make fast choices where duty, survival, and judgment collide.

Lincoln (Hulu)

Steven Spielberg narrows Abraham Lincoln’s story to the final months of the Civil War and the political battle to pass the Thirteenth Amendment. It plays less like a statue coming to life than a procedural about compromise, conscience, pressure, and the cost of turning moral clarity into law.

See all movie lists →

I Endorse Francesca Hong for Governor of Wisconsin

2026-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer Platform Endorsements Campaign Site

I’m endorsing Francesca Hong for Governor of Wisconsin.

Fran is a state representative, single mom, restaurant worker, chef, community organizer, and democratic socialist. She is running the kind of campaign Democrats need: rooted in working people, not corporate PACs, billionaires, or self-funding.

Her agenda is exactly right: universal childcare, paid leave for all, fully funded public schools, free school meals, fairer and cheaper healthcare, affordable housing, a $20 minimum wage, and making the ultra-rich pay their fair share.

Wisconsin deserves a governor who knows what working families are up against and is willing to fight for something bigger than cautious politics as usual.

I’m proud to endorse Francesca Hong. Please donate, volunteer, and spread the word.

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Movies That Make You Think — Part 30

2026-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 30

Part 31

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Six stories about pressure closing in: a crime-scene cleaner who may have erased the truth, a linguist asked to decode visitors from beyond Earth, a negotiator pulled into a Federal Reserve heist, a jury room where one dissenting voice changes everything, a psychiatrist recruited into CIA mind-control experiments, and a steelworker chasing justice through a broken Rust Belt economy.

Cleaner (Netflix)

Tom Cutler makes a living cleaning up death scenes, but one job at a wealthy home leaves him wondering whether he has destroyed evidence in a murder cover-up. The thriller works best as a story about procedure, guilt, and the danger of being useful to powerful people before you understand what they are hiding.

Arrival (Paramount+)

When alien ships appear around the world, linguist Louise Banks is brought in to find a way to communicate before fear turns first contact into war. Denis Villeneuve turns science fiction into a meditation on language, grief, time, and how much of the future we would choose if we could understand it in advance.

Inside Man: Most Wanted (Netflix)

A Federal Reserve robbery forces an NYPD negotiator and an FBI agent into an uneasy partnership with a criminal mastermind who seems to be playing several games at once. As a sequel to Inside Man, it keeps the focus on leverage, misdirection, and how a heist can become an argument over buried history.

12 Angry Men (Prime Video)

Eleven jurors are ready to convict a young defendant, but one holdout insists that reasonable doubt deserves a conversation. Sidney Lumet’s classic shows how justice can depend on patience, humility, and the willingness to challenge certainty when everyone else wants the room to empty.

MK Ultra (Prime Video)

A psychiatrist is recruited into a CIA program testing LSD and mind-control techniques on vulnerable patients inside a rural hospital. Built around the real MK-Ultra experiments, the film asks how quickly scientific language and patriotic secrecy can become cover for abuse.

Out of the Furnace (Prime Video)

Russell Baze returns from prison to a collapsing steel town and a brother pulled into a violent underground fight world. The revenge plot is grim, but the deeper weight comes from jobs disappearing, institutions failing, and working-class loyalty being pushed into desperation.

See all movie lists →

I Endorse Melat Kiros for Congress (CO‑01)

2026-06-22T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer Pledge to Vote Priorities Campaign Site

I’m endorsing Melat Kiros for Congress in Colorado’s 1st District.

The era of “any Democrat will do” is over. CO‑01 deserves a representative who is willing to say exactly where she stands: with the people, not corporate PACs or AIPAC.

Melat is a lawyer, PhD student, democratic socialist, immigrant, and Denverite running on the kind of agenda this moment calls for: Medicare for All, Housing First, universal child and elder care, abolishing ICE, an arms embargo, taxing the rich, labor rights, reproductive justice, LGBTQIA+ rights, and getting money out of politics.

That is the kind of clear, working-class, anti-establishment politics Democrats need more of.

I’m proud to endorse Melat Kiros. If you’re in Denver, please pledge to vote by June 30. Everyone else: donate, volunteer, and spread the word.

Donate Volunteer Pledge to Vote Priorities Campaign Site

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Charity Spotlight - New York Common Pantry

2026-06-22T00:00:00+00:00

Donate — New York Common Pantry Volunteer Learn More

Quick spotlight on a group fighting hunger in New York City with food, dignity, and practical support.

What is New York Common Pantry?

New York Common Pantry (NYCP) works to reduce hunger while promoting dignity, health, and self-sufficiency. Their whole-person approach starts with food, including Choice Pantry fresh pantry packages, Hot Meals, and Nourish support for seniors, then extends into case management through Help 365 and Project Dignity plus nutrition education through Live Healthy!

In FY25, NYCP reported distributing more than 11.7 million meals, including more than 2.2 million Mobile Pantry meals.

Why I like recommending them

Food plus follow-through. They do immediate hunger relief while helping people connect to resources that address why they are food insecure in the first place.
Deeply local. Their work is focused on New Yorkers, including pantry visitors, seniors, families, and homeless neighbors.
Easy ways to plug in. You can donate, volunteer at Manhattan and Bronx pantry sites, or support food and toiletry drives.

How to support

Donate — New York Common Pantry Volunteer Learn More

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Movies That Make You Think — Part 29

2026-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 29

Part 30

Part 31

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Four stories about people trying to talk, steal, spin, or stumble their way out of pressure: a celebrity facing a mysterious video, a detective trapped in a heist mind game, two desperate men fleeing a botched robbery, and a corporate stunt that turns into international chaos.

Outcome (Apple TV)

Reef Hawk has been famous since childhood, but a mysterious video and an extortion threat force him into a frantic apology tour through the damage he has left behind. The comedy turns celebrity crisis management into a sharper look at reputation, accountability, and whether redemption can be manufactured on demand.

Inside Man (Netflix)

A bank robber walks into Manhattan with a plan that seems designed to make every assumption collapse, while a detective tries to figure out what crime is actually being committed. Spike Lee turns the hostage thriller into a chess match about power, buried secrets, and who gets to control the official story.

The Instigators (Prime Video)

Rory and Cobby are desperate enough to take a robbery job, unlucky enough for it to go wrong, and reckless enough to drag Rory’s therapist into the escape. Beneath the comic chaos is a story about ordinary people squeezed by money, institutions, and bad decisions they can no longer outrun.

Balls Up (Prime Video)

Two marketing executives chase a World Cup sponsorship idea until a drunken celebration in Brazil detonates into a public scandal. The premise is broad comedy, but the pressure comes from something recognizable: brands, spectacle, humiliation, and the modern need to turn every mistake into damage control.

See all movie lists →

Movies That Make You Think — Part 28

2026-06-16T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 28

Part 29

Part 30

Part 31

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Five stories about people losing control of the lives they thought they understood: a stoner whose past has been weaponized, a rich New Yorker forced out of his bubble, a true-crime friendship that turns sinister, a politician swallowed by scandal, and a commuter-train flirtation that turns into blackmail.

American Ultra (Prime Video)

Mike Howell thinks he is just a small-town stoner with panic attacks and a dead-end convenience-store job, until CIA assassins arrive and his buried training switches on. The fun is in the collision of pot comedy, spy paranoia, and a surprisingly loyal romance under government fire.

The Longest Week (Prime Video)

A forty-year-old heir gets cut off by his parents, moves in with an old friend, and immediately falls for that friend’s girlfriend. Under the polished Manhattan comedy is a sharper question about privilege, self-invention, and whether charm can survive contact with consequences.

Stolen Baby: The Murder of Heidi Broussard (Netflix)

When Heidi Broussard and her newborn daughter disappear, the search begins with fear and confusion before suspicion turns toward someone painfully close to her. Based on a real case, the movie plays as a true-crime thriller about trust, obsession, and the horror of betrayal hiding inside friendship.

The Runner (Prime Video)

In the aftermath of the BP oil spill, a Louisiana congressman tries to fight for Gulf Coast residents before a sex scandal wrecks his Senate ambitions. Nicolas Cage plays him as a politician caught between public service, private weakness, and the compromises that turn conviction into calculation.

Derailed (Prime Video)

Charles Schine’s routine commute turns dangerous when a chance meeting with Lucinda leads toward an affair, only for a violent stranger to turn their secret into leverage. The thriller keeps tightening around temptation, shame, and the cost of one bad decision becoming a trap.

See all movie lists →

I Endorse Yuh-Line Niou for State Senate (SD‑27)

2026-06-16T00:00:00+00:00

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I’m endorsing Yuh-Line Niou for New York State Senate District 27.

This is the Lower Manhattan seat — including Chinatown, the Lower East Side, the East Village, Greenwich Village, SoHo, Tribeca, and the Financial District.

Yuh-Line has already been a tenant fighter in Albany. She helped pass the 2019 tenant protections, stood up to Andrew Cuomo, and is running on universal child care, immigrant justice, labor, and taxing the ultra-rich.

The primary is June 23. If you are in SD‑27, please find your poll site, vote Yuh-Line Niou, and tell your neighbors. If you are not in the district, please donate, volunteer, and share the campaign.

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Special Endorsement: Vote the NYC-DSA Slate on June 23

2026-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

NYC-DSA Slate Voting Guide Find Your Poll Site Donate to NYC-DSA See All Endorsements

I’m making a special endorsement for the NYC-DSA slate in the June 23 Democratic primary.

This is not just one race. It is a whole slate of candidates trying to build the kind of political power New York needs: housing, healthcare, labor power, immigrant justice, anti-war politics, public transit, and an affordability agenda that actually names the people making the city impossible to live in.

NYC-DSA is backing two congressional candidates, one State Senate candidate, and seven Assembly candidates. If one of these candidates is on your ballot, I think you should vote for them, donate, volunteer, and share the slate.

The slate

Claire Valdez
Congress — NY-07
My endorsement · Campaign site · Donate

Darializa Avila Chevalier
Congress — NY-13
My endorsement · Campaign site · Donate

Aber Kawas
State Senate — SD-12
Campaign site · Donate

Christian Celeste Tate
Assembly — AD-54
Campaign site · Donate

Conrad Blackburn
Assembly — AD-70
Campaign site · Donate

David Orkin
Assembly — AD-38
Campaign site · Donate

Diana Moreno
Assembly — AD-36
Campaign site · Donate

Eon Huntley
Assembly — AD-56
Campaign site · Donate

Illapa Sairitupac
Assembly — AD-65
Campaign site · Donate

Samantha Kattan
Assembly — AD-37
Campaign site · Donate

Why this matters

This slate is about building a bloc — not sending one lonely good person into a system designed to swallow them.

NYC-DSA has already shown what organized working-class politics can do in New York. The next step is sending more people into Congress and Albany who are tied to a real movement, not real estate money, consultant politics, or donor-class panic.

That matters because the fights ahead are not abstract. New Yorkers need lower rents, stronger tenant protections, fast and free buses, universal childcare, Medicare for All, labor rights, ICE out of our communities, and a government that will tax the rich instead of asking working people to accept less.

The June 23 primary is a chance to make that movement bigger.

If you live in one of these districts, check your ballot, find your poll site, and vote the NYC-DSA slate. If you do not, you can still donate, volunteer, and share this with someone who does.

NYC-DSA Slate Voting Guide Find Your Poll Site Donate to NYC-DSA

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We Found The Radical Solution To Surveillance Pricing [Video]

2026-06-10T00:00:00+00:00

Worth watching. More Perfect Union looks at surveillance pricing — the growing practice of companies using personal data to decide what different people should pay.

This is exactly the kind of hidden, tech-enabled corporate power that needs a real policy response: clear rules, consumer protection, and a ban on pricing systems that turn every person’s private data into a way to squeeze them harder.

I Took AOC to Deep Trump Country. They Agreed On One Thing. [Video]

2026-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

Worth watching. More Perfect Union brings AOC to deep Trump country and finds a place where people can still agree: the system is not working for regular people.

This is the kind of conversation that matters — less cable-news theater, more working-class politics, material issues, and actually listening to people.

Darializa Avila Chevalier on Running for Congress, Democratic Socialism & Fighting for Uptown NYC [Video]

2026-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

Darializa Avila Chevalier talks with HOT 97 about running for Congress in NY-13, democratic socialism, and fighting for Uptown NYC.

This is another good introduction to her campaign, her message, and why this race is worth paying attention to.

My Endorsement Donate Volunteer Campaign Site

Claire Valdez on Running for Congress in NY-07 [Video]

2026-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

Claire Valdez talks with CBS New York about running for Congress in NY-07 and what her campaign is focused on.

This is a useful local-news introduction to her race, her message, and why her campaign is worth paying attention to.

My Endorsement Donate Campaign Site

Movies That Make You Think — Part 27

2026-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 27

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Four stories about control slipping away: a psychiatrist pulled into illegal CIA experiments, a politician trying to survive a public scandal, a steelworker hunting for his brother in a collapsing industrial town, and a privileged New Yorker discovering that charm is not the same thing as adulthood.

MK Ultra (Prime Video)

Set during the CIA’s early-1960s MKULTRA experiments, a psychiatrist is recruited to run a secret LSD program inside a rural Mississippi mental hospital. The movie turns scientific ambition into a paranoid ethics test, asking what happens when state power treats human beings like lab equipment.

The Runner (Prime Video)

In the aftermath of the BP oil spill, a Louisiana congressman tries to fight for Gulf Coast residents before a sex scandal wrecks his Senate ambitions. Nicolas Cage plays the politician as a man caught between public service, private weakness, and the compromises that turn conviction into calculation.

Out of the Furnace (Prime Video)

A steelworker in a fading Pennsylvania mill town tries to hold his family together after prison, only to watch his younger brother disappear into bare-knuckle fights and violent debt. It is a grim, slow-burn revenge story about loyalty, economic ruin, and how grief can harden into a weapon.

The Longest Week (Prime Video)

See all movie lists →

Darializa Avila Chevalier on Hasan Piker [Video]

2026-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

Darializa Avila Chevalier joins the stream to talk about her campaign for Congress in NY-13 before heading to an amazing Middle Eastern restaurant to try some of their best dishes.

This is a good way to get a feel for her campaign, her message, and why this race is worth paying attention to.

My Endorsement Donate Volunteer Campaign Site

Movies That Make You Think — Part 26

2026-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 26

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Four films about people under pressure: an interrogation that turns ordinary questions into a trap, a cab ride that becomes a confession booth, a gambling trip built on hope and self-destruction, and a poker empire that attracts the wrong kind of attention.

Reality (HBO Max)

Based on the real FBI interview transcript of Reality Winner, this stripped-down drama follows a young intelligence contractor as agents arrive at her home and a polite conversation tightens into something much more dangerous. The tension comes from how little the room seems to change while everything in her life does.

Daddio (Netflix)

A woman lands at JFK and gets into a cab bound for Manhattan, where a late-night ride turns into a searching conversation with her driver about desire, regret, loneliness, and the stories people tell themselves. It is a small movie by design, built around two people slowly letting the silence get honest.

Mississippi Grind (Netflix)

A broke gambler deep in debt latches onto a charismatic card player he sees as a good-luck charm, and the two head south toward a high-stakes game in New Orleans. The road trip moves through casinos, bars, and racetracks, but the real game is whether either man can outrun his own patterns.

Molly’s Game (Prime Video)

After an Olympic-class skiing career ends, Molly Bloom builds one of the world’s most exclusive underground poker games, drawing celebrities, power players, and eventually federal investigators. The hook is the money, but the movie is really about control, reputation, and how a game can become a courtroom.

See all movie lists →

I Endorse Sam Forstag for Congress (MT‑01)

2026-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer Events Policies Campaign Site

I’m endorsing Sam Forstag for Congress in Montana’s 1st District.

Sam is a smokejumper, union leader, and organizer, a working Montanan running to make Congress work for working people.

His campaign is focused on the basics: affordable housing, real healthcare, childcare and public education, public lands, fair taxes, strong unions, secure retirement, and getting money out of politics.

That is exactly the kind of Democrat we need more of: someone rooted in labor, public service, and the real cost-of-living crisis people are facing.

Unlike Ryan Zinke, Sam is not backed by billionaires and corporate PACs. He is building a people-powered campaign to take back MT‑01 for working families.

I’m proud to endorse Sam Forstag. Please donate, volunteer, and spread the word.

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I Endorse Tom Steyer for Governor of California

2026-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer Issues Endorse Tom Campaign Site

I’m endorsing Tom Steyer for Governor of California.

California is too expensive. Housing costs are too high. Utility bills are too high. Public schools need serious investment. And politics is still dominated by corporate and special interests.

In this race, Steyer is the only progressive in real contention. He is running on the right agenda: build one million homes, lower electric bills, make corporations and billionaires pay more, fund public education, guarantee health care, abolish ICE, and defend the climate.

He has also actually delivered before: he helped defeat Big Oil in the fight over California’s clean air law, helped pass Prop. 39 to bring billions into public schools, helped pass Prop. 56 to raise billions for health care, and co-founded Beneficial State Bank, which has financed thousands of affordable housing units.

The contrast with Xavier Becerra matters. Becerra looks like the same old bought politics: a direct Chevron max-out check, plus pro-Becerra outside money from Chevron, California Resources Corporation, Meta, Airbnb, McDonald’s, DaVita, Centene / Health Net, real estate interests, and medical industry groups.

If those are the interests lining up behind you, that tells voters something.

California needs someone willing to fight them, not someone they are trying to install. I’m proud to endorse Tom Steyer for Governor. Please donate, volunteer, endorse, and spread the word.

Donate Volunteer Issues Endorse Tom Campaign Site

See all endorsements →

Movies That Make You Think — Part 25

2026-05-24T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 25

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Four pressure-cooker stories: a poker player trying to stay alive, a separated dad trying to find his voice, a commuter trapped in a deadly game, and a detective stuck inside a robbery where nothing is as simple as it looks.

Dead Money (Prime Video)

After a home poker game is robbed, a professional player and his girlfriend get pulled into a dangerous scramble over stolen cash. What starts as a bad night at the table turns into a test of nerve, loyalty, and whether the right hand can save more than money.

Is This Thing On? (Hulu)

As Alex and Tess’s marriage quietly unravels, he stumbles into New York’s stand-up scene while she starts reclaiming pieces of her own life. The comedy comes from the awkwardness, but the hook is watching two people figure out whether a split is an ending or a strange way back to themselves.

Retribution (Prime Video)

A Berlin financier driving his kids to school gets a call from a stranger who says there’s a bomb under his seat. Forced to follow escalating instructions while keeping his children alive, he has to untangle who is controlling the day before the car becomes a coffin.

Inside Man (Prime Video)

A sharp detective, a meticulous bank robber, and a high-powered fixer collide during a Manhattan hostage crisis. The longer the standoff runs, the more the robbery starts to look like cover for something older, uglier, and much harder to negotiate away.

See all movie lists →

I Endorse Effie Phillips-Staley for Congress (NY‑17)

2026-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer Priorities Campaign Site

I’m endorsing Effie Phillips-Staley for Congress in New York’s 17th District.

Effie is a Tarrytown Trustee and nonprofit executive who has spent her career in social justice, education, culture, disaster relief, and public service. She is now in her third term as a Tarrytown Village Trustee, where her campaign says she has worked on safer and more walkable streets, housing affordability, local climate resilience, and supporting small businesses.

That kind of local, practical, people-first experience matters.

Effie is running on the kind of agenda Democrats should be fighting for everywhere: Medicare for All, universal childcare, building millions of new homes, tax fairness, abolishing ICE, and Block the Bombs legislation. She is also refusing corporate PAC and AIPAC money.

That is a serious progressive campaign. It is about lowering costs, taking on entrenched power, and making Washington work for regular people instead of the ultra-rich.

NY‑17 deserves a representative who will actually fight for working families, public goods, civil rights, climate resilience, and a foreign policy rooted in human rights.

I’m proud to endorse Effie Phillips-Staley. Please donate, volunteer, and spread the word.

Donate Volunteer Priorities Campaign Site

See all endorsements →

I Endorse Dr. Adam Hamawy for Congress (NJ‑12)

2026-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer Priorities Campaign Site

I’m endorsing Dr. Adam Hamawy for Congress in New Jersey’s 12th District.

Hamawy is a doctor, veteran, humanitarian, father, and small business owner. He joined the New Jersey Army National Guard, served as a combat trauma surgeon in Iraq, and rose to the rank of Lt. Colonel. He has treated patients in war zones and disaster zones. He built a medical practice in the Princeton area. And he has repeatedly chosen service when the easy thing would have been to look away.

That matters.

He is running for a government that works for working families, not billionaires and special interests. His campaign is centered on Medicare for All, strong public schools, affordability, civil rights, economic justice, and a foreign policy that values human life.

That is the kind of politics this moment calls for: serious, rooted, morally clear, and willing to fight the systems that keep ordinary people paying more and getting less.

NJ‑12 deserves a representative who understands that healthcare is a human right, that families are being squeezed by costs they cannot keep absorbing, and that public service should mean actually serving the public.

I’m proud to endorse Dr. Adam Hamawy. Please donate, volunteer, and spread the word.

Donate Volunteer Priorities Campaign Site

See all endorsements →

Claire Valdez: Millennial Socialism [Video]

2026-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

Worth watching. Claire Valdez talks with Joshua Citarella about millennial socialism, working-class politics, and what it means to run a campaign rooted in housing, healthcare, and workers’ rights.

This is another good look at why her campaign in NY-07 is worth paying attention to.

My Endorsement Donate Campaign Site

Graham Platner Wants a Democratic Revolution [Video]

2026-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

Worth watching. Graham Platner talks about why Democrats need something much bigger than business as usual: a democratic revolution rooted in working-class politics, anti-establishment energy, and a party that actually fights for people.

This is exactly the kind of candidate and message worth paying attention to.

My Endorsement Campaign Site

Chris Rabb for Congress

2026-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chris Rabb is running for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District (PA-03), and Election Day is tomorrow — May 19th.

If you know someone in the district, this is the time to send them something clear and easy to watch. Rabb is an anti-establishment, working-class, people-first candidate worth sharing before the polls open.

The posts below are the quick-share pile: the endorsement, local profiles, interviews, and speeches that show why this race matters.

Start with whichever one is easiest to share. A good video or short profile can move faster than a long argument.

AOC's Inspiring Philadelphia Speech for Chris Rabb [Video] May 17, 2026 Chris Rabb Candidate Profile for Pennsylvania's 3rd Congressional District [Video] May 15, 2026 Hasan Piker and Chris Rabb: Full Video May 11, 2026 Chris Rabb on The Majority Report [Video] May 1, 2026 On the Issues: Chris Rabb for Congress, District 3 [Video] Apr 18, 2026 Chris Rabb Philadelphia Congressional Forum Supercut [Video] Apr 11, 2026 Endorsement: Chris Rabb for Congress (PA‑03) — 2026 Primary Mar 20, 2026

Oh yeah: tomorrow is the big voting day

Pennsylvania Primary Election: Tuesday, May 19, 2026. Polls are open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. If you are in line by 8 p.m., stay in line — you can vote.

Find Your Polling Place Check Registration Donate Volunteer

AOC's Inspiring Philadelphia Speech for Chris Rabb [Video]

2026-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

Inspiring. AOC’s full remarks in Philadelphia for Chris Rabb are the kind of speech that makes the stakes feel clear: people-powered politics, working-class focus, and a campaign that is actually trying to build something bigger than one race.

This is the energy. Watch it, share it, and if you are in PA-03, make a plan to vote.

Voting reminder

Pennsylvania Primary Election: Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Polls are open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. If you are in line by 8 p.m., stay in line — you can vote.

Find Your Polling Place Check Registration My Endorsement Campaign Site

Chris Rabb Candidate Profile for Pennsylvania's 3rd Congressional District [Video]

2026-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Another good Chris Rabb profile. 6abc Philadelphia gives a quick look at Rabb as a candidate for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District and the kind of campaign he is running.

It’s useful to see these shorter local-news pieces too — they show how the race is being introduced to voters outside the usual political media bubble.

My Endorsement Campaign Site

Hasan Piker and Chris Rabb: Full Video

2026-05-11T00:00:00+00:00

Really cool to see. This gives a strong look at Chris Rabb both in a speech setting and behind the scenes — exactly the kind of grounded, people-first campaign energy that makes his run worth paying attention to.

The more voters get to see candidates like this directly, the clearer it becomes why grassroots, working-class politics can cut through the noise.

My Endorsement Campaign Site

Why Political Elites Are Afraid Of This Oyster Farmer [Video]

2026-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

Populism is the way. More Perfect Union profiles Graham Platner and the kind of working-class politics that political elites keep underestimating.

This is exactly the kind of message Democrats should be leaning into: direct, grounded, and focused on people who have been ignored by establishment politics for far too long.

My Endorsement Campaign Site

Graham Platner On Service, Messaging & the Future for Democrats | The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart

2026-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

Worth watching. Jon Stewart talks with Graham Platner about service, messaging, and what Democrats need to do differently if they want to build a broader working-class coalition.

My Endorsement Campaign Site

Chris Rabb on The Majority Report [Video]

2026-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chris Rabb on The Majority Report. A good conversation about his Pennsylvania congressional campaign, the DSA-backed coalition behind it, and the kind of working-class politics this moment needs.

My Endorsement Campaign Site

Movies That Make You Think — Part 24

2026-04-24T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 24

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

A mix of celebrity panic, old grudges, and crooked institutions — four very different movies, all with enough tension or chaos to keep the night moving.

Outcome (Apple TV+)

A beloved Hollywood star gets hit with a blackmail threat tied to a mysterious video, forcing him into a messy apology tour through old relationships, image management, and the wreckage of his own past.

Balls Up (Prime Video)

After a reckless World Cup sponsorship pitch and an even worse celebration, two American marketing executives find themselves hunted across Brazil by fans, officials, and criminals. It’s loud, stupid, and built around watching one bad idea spiral into many more.

The Gift (Prime Video)

A married couple’s polished new life begins to crack when an old acquaintance starts showing up with gifts, cryptic warmth, and unresolved history. The movie turns a chance reunion into a slow, unsettling reckoning with guilt and buried cruelty.

2 Guns (Prime Video)

Two undercover operatives from different agencies discover they’ve both been manipulated after a cartel job explodes into a fight over stolen money. The double-crosses pile up fast, but the real hook is watching two reluctant partners navigate a corrupt system with no one left to trust.

See all movie lists →

I Endorse Darializa Avila Chevalier for Congress (NY‑13)

2026-04-20T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer Events Campaign Site See All Endorsements

I’m endorsing Darializa Avila Chevalier for Congress in New York’s 13th District.

She’s a real fighter. She has a real shot.

Darializa is running to put working people first. Her message centers on keeping people in their homes. It centers on defending neighbors from ICE. It centers on investing in communities and children instead of bombs.

That kind of unapologetic working-class politics is exactly what this moment calls for. She’s making a direct case for politics that is pro-worker and anti-establishment and not bought by corporate interests.

If you’re in NY‑13 or you want to help send another serious progressive fighter to Congress please donate. Please volunteer. Please spread the word.

See all endorsements →

Charity Spotlight - Coalition for the Homeless

2026-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

Donate - Coalition for the Homeless Volunteer Learn More

Quick spotlight on a group that combines immediate help with long-term advocacy, and has spent decades pushing New York toward more humane responses to homelessness.

What is Coalition for the Homeless?

Coalition for the Homeless is the nation’s oldest advocacy and direct service organization helping homeless individuals and families. Since 1981, it has paired frontline support, including food, eviction prevention, crisis services, housing, job training, and youth programs, with policy advocacy, shelter monitoring, and public education focused on long-term solutions.

Why I like recommending them

Direct help + systems change. They work on urgent needs right now while also fighting for housing-based solutions and the rights of homeless New Yorkers.
Deep local credibility. Their advocacy is grounded in decades of hands-on work with people facing homelessness in New York City.

How to support

Donate - Coalition for the Homeless Volunteer Learn More

See all charity spotlights →

Movies That Make You Think — Part 23

2026-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 23

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

The Fallout (HBO Max)

After surviving a school tragedy, Vada finds herself unable to slip back into ordinary life, leaning on fragile new connections as she struggles with grief, anxiety, and the long aftershocks of trauma.

One Battle After Another (HBO Max)

Washed-up revolutionary Bob lives off-grid with his fiercely independent daughter until an old enemy resurfaces, setting off a frantic search that forces him to confront the unfinished wreckage of his past.

Challengers (Hulu)

A former tennis prodigy turned coach tries to revive her husband’s career by placing him in a low-stakes Challenger match against his former best friend—who also happens to be her ex—turning competition into a combustible triangle of ambition, resentment, and desire.

You People (Netflix)

When two Los Angeles millennials fall in love, their relationship is thrown into a gauntlet of clashing expectations, cultural differences, and the comic chaos that comes with introducing their families.

See all movie lists →

On the Issues: Chris Rabb for Congress, District 3 [Video]

2026-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

Another strong Chris Rabb video. PCNTV’s On the Issues segment gives a straightforward look at how he talks about the race, the district, and the issues at stake.

My Endorsement Campaign Site

Chris Rabb Philadelphia Congressional Forum Supercut [Video]

2026-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

Quick Chris Rabb video. If you want a concise intro to how he talks about the race and the issues, this Philadelphia Congressional Forum supercut is a good place to start.

My Endorsement Campaign Site

Zohran Mamdani: The 100 Days Interview [Video]

2026-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

Worth a watch if you have been following Zohran’s early time in office. NY1 sits down with him for a 100 days interview on governing, affordability, and how he sees the city so far.

60,000 Trump Voters Just Elected a Socialist. We Asked Them Why. [Video]

2026-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

One of the most important videos about modern politics. More Perfect Union talks to voters about why they backed a socialist candidate — and why the future is a populist coalition of working-class voters.

It’s a sharp reminder that realignment doesn’t come from elite messaging. It comes from material politics that actually speak to people’s lives.

Movies That Make You Think — Part 22

2026-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 22

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

MaXXXine (HBO Max)

Maxine Minx finally gets her shot at mainstream fame in 1980s Hollywood—but just as her star begins to rise, a killer’s bloody trail through Los Angeles threatens to pull everything back into darkness.

The Assessment (Hulu)

In a future where parenthood is tightly controlled, a couple undergoes a seven-day evaluation to prove they are fit to have a child—only for the process to spiral into something far more disturbing.

Honest Thief (Netflix)

A career bank robber tries to turn himself in after falling in love and wanting a clean start, but when the agents handling his confession prove to be more crooked than he is, he has to fight to clear his name.

Anniversary (Hulu)

In this gripping thriller, a close-knit family is pulled into the turmoil of a controversial rising movement known as “The Change,” and the strain threatens to tear them apart from the inside out.

See all movie lists →

We Need More Democrats Like Effie Phillips-Staley [Video]

2026-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

Worth a watch. It highlights Effie Phillips-Staley and argues that Democrats need more candidates like her in the party.

If you want the clip in an easy-to-share format, it’s embedded below.

Donate Campaign Site

We Found The Radical Solution To Skyrocketing Grocery Prices [Video]

2026-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

Worth a watch. This More Perfect Union video looks at one concrete answer to rising grocery costs: publicly run grocery stores and the existing military commissary model that already delivers lower prices.

I especially like that it focuses on a real example already operating at scale, instead of treating the whole idea as purely theoretical.

I Endorse Oliver Larkin for Congress

2026-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

I am endorsing Oliver Larkin for Congress in Florida’s 25th district. (After Florida’s mid-decade redistricting, he is now running in the newly drawn 25th district, where most of the old 23rd district’s residents live.)

He is a former Bernie Sanders 2016 organizer running on Medicare for All, a $25 minimum wage, democracy reform, and refusing corporate PAC money. He has also spent years organizing and advocating in South Florida, which matters in a race like this.

More importantly, he is willing to make a direct, unapologetic case for progressive politics at a moment when too many Democrats are content to accommodate corporate power and drift right. We need more candidates who are actually willing to fight for working people instead of trimming their politics to fit donor expectations.

He is the FAR better choice in this race, and he has my endorsement.

See all endorsements: Endorsements Series

Endorsement: Chris Rabb for Congress (PA‑03) — 2026 Primary

2026-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer Platform Press Campaign Site See All Endorsements

—

This is Endorsement #17 for Chris Rabb, running in Pennsylvania’s 3rd District (PA‑03). Primary: May 19, 2026.

Rabb is a five-term state representative. He’s running to put community over commerce and confront the danger concentrated wealth poses to self-government.

He’s backed by Sunrise Movement, DSA Philadelphia, Reclaim Philadelphia, and other grassroots groups — not corporate PACs. His platform centers healthcare, housing, clean air and water, and workers’ rights.

If you’re in PA‑03 — or you want to send another unbought progressive fighter to Congress — donate, volunteer, and share.

See all endorsements →

Movies That Make You Think — Part 21 (March 2026)

2026-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 21

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

The Company Men (Amazon)

The story centers on a year in the life of three men (Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper) trying to survive corporate downsizing at a major company during the 2010 recession—and how that affects them, their families, and their communities.

Atomic Blonde (HBO Max)

Agent Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) is the most lethal assassin in the British secret service. Sent alone into Cold War Berlin to deliver a priceless dossier, she partners with embedded station chief David Percival (James McAvoy) to navigate her way through the deadliest game of spies.

Joker (HBO Max)

A failed comedian (Joaquin Phoenix) begins a slow descent into madness as he transforms into Gotham’s most notorious criminal mastermind.

American Sweatshop (Hulu)

A content moderator (Lili Reinhart) is tasked with purging offensive media from the internet. When she witnesses a crime in a video, she is lured away from the safety of her keyboard as she obsessively seeks to hold someone accountable.

See all movie lists →

Endorsement: Junaid Ahmed for Congress (IL‑08) — 2026 Primary

2026-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer Issues Endorsements Campaign Site See All Endorsements

This is Endorsement #16 — for Junaid Ahmed, running for Congress in Illinois’ 8th Congressional District (IL‑08).

Election note: Illinois’ primary is Tuesday, March 17, 2026.

I’m backing Ahmed because he’s running a people-powered campaign that says no corporate or special-interest money, while centering priorities like healthcare as a human right, quality education, and an economy that works for all of us.

His story also adds weight to the campaign: he’s the son of an immigrant father, built a tech business in Illinois, and helped launch Chi-Care during the pandemic to deliver hot meals and survival supplies to unhoused neighbors.

Why this endorsement

Unbought campaign. Ahmed says the campaign is 100% by the people and rejects corporate or special-interest money.
Material, working-class priorities. He’s running on healthcare as a human right, stronger economic security, quality education, and protecting Social Security and Medicare.
Service-rooted candidacy. Chi-Care and his broader community work make this feel grounded in real-world needs, not just consultant language.
Strong progressive coalition. His endorsers include Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, Chuy Garcia, Ro Khanna, Pramila Jayapal, Delia Ramirez, Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, Sunrise Movement, and End Citizens United.

If you’re in IL‑08 — or you want to back more unapologetically people-powered candidates — donate, volunteer, and share.

See all endorsements →

Movies That Make You Think — Part 20 (March 2026)

2026-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 20

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

MAJOR 20TH EDITION POST!

Eight movies about systems and the people who think they can beat them — until the bill comes due.

In the Blink of an Eye (Hulu)

Three storylines, spanning thousands of years, intersect and reflect on hope, connection, and the circle of life.

Pain Hustlers (Netflix)

A broke but ambitious single mom lands a lucrative opportunity in pharma sales, but how far will she go to turn a potent new painkiller into a success?

Two for the Money (Netflix)

A former collegiate football star spins his uncanny prognostication skills into a new vocation with a renowned but shady “sports consultant.”

Casino (Netflix)

A legendary gambler goes all-in when the mob asks him to run a Las Vegas casino, but will a volatile marriage and vicious friend end his winning streak?

Focus (Netflix)

Three years after breaking off a romance with his protégé, expert con artist Nicky Spurgeon finds her on the other side of his elaborate new scam.

The Infiltrator (Hulu)

In 1986, federal agent Robert Mazur poses as a money-laundering businessman to infiltrate the trafficking network of Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.

Margin Call (Netflix)

An analyst at an investment bank spots a looming catastrophe, and panic travels up the chain of command as the firm scrambles to contain the damage.

Mississippi Grind (Netflix)

A gambler mired in debt thinks another cardsharp may just be his good luck charm as the two head for New Orleans to buy into a high-stakes poker game.

See all movie lists →

Why I'm Backing James Talarico Over Jasmine Crockett — Texas Senate 2026

2026-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve already endorsed James Talarico for U.S. Senate. This is the short, explicit “why him, not Jasmine Crockett?”.

My endorsement: James Talarico for U.S. Senate (Texas)

1) The GOP wants to face her in the General Election

The Washington Post reports that the Republican machine is boosting Jasmine Crockett ahead of the primary. If the other party’s establishment is spending to shape your nominee, they’re signaling who they think is easier to beat in November.

The Independent previously reported (citing NOTUS and a source familiar with the effort) that Senate Republicans also pushed favorable Crockett polling to help build a “Crockett is surging” narrative, in part to goad/recruit her into the race.

Sources: Washington Post · The Independent

2) Texas needs something to vote for, not just “fight” against energy

Crockett pitches herself as the bigger “fighter”. But Texas is huge, expensive, (still) persuasion-heavy, and (like most areas) craves populism in this moment. What will not work is only being against stuff.

The AP describes a race shattering spending records, and highlights Talarico’s ability to build a statewide operation, including a major fundraising advantage, while also making appeals aimed at disaffected Republicans.

Sources: AP News

3) Follow the money: Crockett is taking corporate PAC + crypto/tech cash

Talarico has sworn off corporate PAC donations in this Senate campaign. The Texas Tribune reports Crockett transferred money from corporate PAC contributions from her House account into her Senate campaign. That means Crockett has taken corporate PAC money for the Senate campaign, unlike Talarico.

🚨 NOTUS also dug into Crockett’s donor mix, including Silicon Valley / crypto donors (like Marc Andreessen and the Winklevoss twins) plus corporate PACs, which is the opposite of the “anti‑corporate” brand she’s running on. Wild.

Sources: Texas Tribune · NOTUS

4) Kicking journalists out and then lying about it is a MAGA move

This is a huge red flag for me: copying the MAGA playbook of treating the press like the enemy.

Semafor reports Crockett’s campaign escalating confrontations with political journalists (including incidents involving an Atlantic reporter and a CNN reporter). In one case, the campaign brushed it off as “silly season” / “no evidence.” Then The Atlantic published audio and a transcript of Crockett’s team telling Atlantic reporter Elaine Godfrey that she had to leave the rally.

I want a nominee who can handle questions in public, tell the truth when challenged, and not import “war on the press” behavior into a Democratic primary.

Sources: Semafor · The Atlantic

5) Israeli Government: “beholden” is not a serious posture

When pressed about Israel, Crockett framed the U.S.–Israel relationship as something we should be beholden to, not something a senator should scrutinize, debate, or condition based on U.S. values and law.

That answer is a bright red flag for me.

And it’s not just the position. Crockett also voted YES on the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act (H.R. 8034), a package that included billions for weapons systems and munitions. If your red line is no more offensive weapons, her record doesn’t match it.

Sources: Bluesky (video clip) · House Clerk (Roll Call 152) · House Appropriations summary of H.R. 8034

Jasmine Crockett claims we must be beholden to our "relationship with Israel". Great question by the interviewer. Horrific, and disqualifying answer by Crockett.
— The Liberty Pear (@thelibertypear.com) 2026-02-28T22:58:14.569Z

6) The “slave mentality” comments and the “picking cotton” line are downright offensive

In a Vanity Fair interview, Crockett suggested that some Hispanic voters have a “slave mentality”. That is offensive and f’ed up. It is also the kind of rhetoric that talks down to people instead of persuading them.

Then there is the church speech where she argued America needs immigrants for farm labor and said we are “done picking cotton.” That is a weird, demeaning way to talk about labor and immigration, and offensive to multiple groups of people.

Extremely offensive, and unacceptable.

Sources: Vanity Fair · ABC 33/40

7) Stock disclosure: this is an ethics problem

The watchdog group FACT filed an ethics complaint asking the Office of Congressional Conduct to investigate whether Crockett violated disclosure rules by failing to fully disclose stock holdings and debts.

If you are running as anti-corruption, you do not get to play games with transparency.

This is a basic trust issue. Extremely unacceptable.

Sources: FACT complaint (PDF) · House Clerk financial disclosure (2021) · House Clerk financial disclosure (2022) · House Clerk amendment (2022)

8) Ethics and character matter

Crockett’s campaign and pro-Crockett groups have run attack ads against Talarico. Talarico has said he is trying to run a positive race and lower the temperature.

He continues to say he respects Crockett and how he considers her a friend - despite increased attacks and lies by her and her campaign.

Sources: Texas Tribune · Texas Tribune (debate)

Bonus: a longer national scene‑setter

If you want a reported deep‑dive on how this primary is being framed nationally, The Atlantic has a long read on the Talarico vs. Crockett matchup.

Sources: The Atlantic

Bottom line: I’m backing Talarico because I think he’s the better general-election nominee and the better messenger for anti-corruption, working-class politics in a state Democrats have to actually win.

More James Talarico on The Liberty Pear

Endorsement: James Talarico for U.S. Senate (Texas) James Talarico & 20 Undecided Voters | Must Watch Video James Talarico on Colbert! Recent videos for March 3rd primary candidates I’ve endorsed

Movies That Make You Think — Part 19

2026-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 19

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Four movies about pressure — political, personal, and criminal — and what people do when there’s no clean exit.

Darkest Hour (Netflix)

As the threat of Nazi invasion looms, newly appointed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill rallies a nation to fight for its very survival.

Ballad of a Small Player (Netflix)

Amid the glittering casinos of Macau, a gambler running from his past — and his debts — becomes fascinated by an enigmatic woman at the baccarat table.

Man on Fire (Netflix)

Hired to guard a young girl in Mexico City, a retired CIA operative with a dark past will stop at nothing to rescue her from a kidnapping ring.

The Town (Max)

Ben Affleck writes, directs and stars in this crime thriller as a Boston bank robber who finds himself in love with the victim of a previous heist. But stolen cash and a stolen heart can lead to the destruction of this prince of thieves.

See all movie lists →

Great TV Shows - Part 5

2026-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

See Part 1 Here See Part 2 Here See Part 3 Here See Part 4 Here You’re viewing Great TV Shows - Part 5 See Part 6 Here

See also: Amazing Movies: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6 • Part 7 • Part 8 • Part 9 • Part 10 • Part 11 • Part 12 • Part 13 • Part 14 • Part 15

Five TV picks: a weird workplace conspiracy, reality-as-therapy, a Marvel experiment, a twisty limited series, and an all-timer sports drama.

The Chair Company (HBO Max)

After an embarrassing incident at work, a man (Emmy® winner Tim Robinson) finds himself investigating a far-reaching conspiracy.

The Rehearsal (HBO Max)

Nathan Fielder allows ordinary people to prepare for life’s biggest moments by “rehearsing” them in carefully crafted simulations.

WandaVision (Disney+)

Two super-powered beings living idealized suburban lives suspect that everything is not as it seems.

HIS & HERS (Netflix)

Two estranged spouses, one a detective and the other a news reporter, vie to solve a murder in which each believes the other is a prime suspect.

Friday Night Lights Season 1 (Prime Video)

Audiences cheer the first season of this poignant and powerful drama. The intimate storytelling and the inspired performances involve the viewer with an authentic portrait of life, love, family, and friendships that really hits home.

See all TV lists →

Endorsement: Peggy Flanagan for U.S. Senate (Minnesota)

2026-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer Priorities Campaign Site See All Endorsements

This is Endorsement #15 — Peggy Flanagan for U.S. Senate (Minnesota).

I’m endorsing Flanagan because her priorities are straightforward — and she’s running a campaign that isn’t taking a dime of corporate PAC money.

She’s also endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders.

What she’s running on (from her priorities page)

End corruption. Reverse Citizens United, tighten ethics, and get corporate/dark money out.
Affordable healthcare. Medicare for All, less insurance-company red tape, lower drug costs.
Help families afford life. $17 minimum wage tied to inflation, paid family/medical leave, affordable housing.
Protect rights + democracy. John Lewis Voting Rights Act, Equality Act, Women’s Health Protection Act.

If you want the full details, the Priorities link above has the complete list.

If you’re aligned, donate or volunteer above — and share.

See all endorsements →

Endorsement: Juliana Stratton for U.S. Senate (Illinois)

2026-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer Priorities Campaign Site See All Endorsements

This is Endorsement #14 — Juliana Stratton for U.S. Senate (Illinois).

I’m backing Stratton because her campaign priorities are clear: make life more affordable, create opportunities for the middle class, and protect rights and our democracy — while rejecting corporate PAC money.

Why this endorsement (from her stated priorities)

Making life more affordable
- End Trump’s trade war / “tax on working families”
- Raise the federal minimum wage
- Secure Medicare for All
- Middle-class tax cut paid for by higher taxes on millionaires
- Fight for a $25 minimum wage
Creating opportunities for the middle class
- Restore the Department of Education
- Expand federal support for trades learning and technical schools
- Invest in grant programs for small business owners
Protecting your rights and our democracy
- Pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act
- Restore the protections of Roe v. Wade
- Pass common-sense gun safety laws
- Abolish ICE
Rejecting ALL corporate PAC money

If you can, donate or volunteer above — and share this endorsement.

See all endorsements →

Recent videos for March 3rd primary candidates I've endorsed

2026-02-20T00:00:00+00:00

If you’re following the March 2026 primaries, here’s a watch‑and‑share roundup of videos for the candidates I’ve endorsed — separated by candidate, with my endorsement link under each section.

Mar 3, 2026: James Talarico (Texas U.S. Senate) + Nida Allam (NC‑04)
Mar 17, 2026: Kat Abughazaleh (IL‑09)

James Talarico (Texas U.S. Senate) — Mar 3, 2026

Endorsement: James Talarico for U.S. Senate (Texas)

James Talarico campaigns for U.S. Senate (Austin)

KHOU interview: closing pitch ahead of the Democratic Senate primary

Nida Allam (NC‑04) — Mar 3, 2026

Endorsement: Nida Allam for Congress (NC‑04)

Majority Report: Nida Allam segment

Daily Bern conversation

Kat Abughazaleh (IL‑09) — Mar 17, 2026

Endorsement: Kat Abughazaleh for Congress (IL‑09)

Candidate Corner (Bitchuation Room)

Campaign stream (with Demi Palecek)

Evanston Now interview

See all endorsements →

Movies That Make You Think — Part 18

2026-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 18

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Four different kinds of tension — surveillance, conscience, loyalty, and chaos — all with that “hangs in your head afterward” quality.

KIMI (Max)

A tight techno‑thriller about isolation and surveillance — a woman who listens for a living hears something she can’t unhear, and the system closes in.

Juror #2 (Max)

A courtroom pressure cooker built around one question: what do you do when your duty to tell the truth collides with your instinct to protect yourself?

End of Watch (Max)

A gritty LA cop story with real heart — friendship, adrenaline, and the way “routine” work can turn into life‑or‑death fast.

Fargo (Prime Video)

A darkly funny crime classic about how small greed turns into big violence — and how ordinary people react when chaos drops into their lives.

See all movie lists →

Movies That Make You Think — Part 17

2026-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 17

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Four very different stories, but all built around the same pressure: what happens when you want connection, answers, or control badly enough.

Friendship (Max)

A painfully funny black comedy about adult male friendship — the need to belong curdling into something else.

Weapons (Max)

A town comes apart when a classroom of kids vanishes in the middle of the night — dread, rumor, and a mystery that won’t stay contained.

Miracle (Hulu)

A sports classic about belief and discipline — a reminder that “impossible” is often a story people tell themselves until it isn’t.

If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You (Max)

A raw, darkly funny pressure‑cooker about caregiving, identity, and the thin line between “holding it together” and unraveling.

See all movie lists →

Thank You For 80k, Bluesky

2026-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

Thank you everyone on Bluesky for 80,000+ followers!

80k still feels unreal. You’ve helped amplify long‑form explainers, pushed constructive debate, and kept the focus on working people and affordability. I’m grateful.

If you’re not on Bluesky yet, consider joining — it’s growing fast and the discourse is healthier than anywhere else I’ve used.

Bluesky Starter Packs

James Talarico on Colbert!

2026-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

Allegedly, Trump’s FCC was so scared to let this air that they pressured CBS not to run it on the show — so here’s the video.

If you want this to get more views than it would’ve otherwise (and make the adminstration mad!), watch it then share it.

Nida Allam (and Bernie) Lead Rally in NC (Video)

2026-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

Nida Allam was there — if you’re in NC‑04, please check out my endorsement:

Endorsement: Nida Allam for Congress (NC‑04)

Movies That Make You Think — Part 16

2026-01-26T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 16

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Four watch-now picks with that “hangs in your head afterward” quality — paranoia, family secrets, survival, and space.

Bugonia (Peacock)

A conspiracy spiral that starts as dark comedy and turns into something sharper — two true believers kidnap a CEO they’re convinced is not human.

Inheritance (Hulu)

A father’s buried past detonates into an international conspiracy — tense, fast, and built around the question of who you can trust.

Eden (Netflix)

A true-story island escape that turns into a pressure cooker — paradise, control, and what happens when other people show up.

Ad Astra (Peacock)

A quiet, beautifully shot space odyssey that’s really about obsession and loneliness — and the emotional wreckage left behind.

See all movie lists →

The first primaries I’m watching in 2026

2026-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

Over the next 53 days, we’ll get the opening signal for 2026; a year where a whole swath of primary challengers could start changing the Democratic Party.

These early races are a must‑watch test: can pro‑worker populists break through the donor/consultant machine?

Here are the early races I’m watching, with links to my endorsements (each one includes ways to help):

Analilia Mejía (NJ‑11) — Feb 5, 2026 (special primary) — Endorsement →
Nida Allam (NC‑04) — Mar 3, 2026 — Endorsement →
James Talarico (Texas U.S. Senate) — Mar 3, 2026 — Endorsement →
Kat Abughazaleh (IL‑09) — Mar 17, 2026 — Endorsement →

How these early races go will tell us a lot about what the rest of the 2026 primary map looks like — and where the energy is.

If you want the full list as I add more: See all endorsements →

Endorsement: Analilia Mejía for Congress (NJ‑11)

2026-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer Why I’m Running Campaign Site

This is Endorsement #13 — for Analilia Mejía, running for Congress in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District (NJ‑11).

Election note: this is a special election — Election Day is Thursday, February 5, 2026.

Her message is blunt in a way more candidates need to be: “blue no matter who” isn’t enough — we need unbought leadership that will fight the oligarchy and make the economy work for working people.

She’s a Jersey candidate with a working‑family story: her mom landing a union job changed everything — and Analilia has spent years fighting for wins like the $15 minimum wage and paid sick days in New Jersey.

Why this endorsement

Unbought, unbossed energy. A candidate who doesn’t do the “don’t ask for much” politics that keeps working families stuck.
Pro‑worker track record. Rooted in fights for concrete material gains like wages and paid leave.
Willing to confront the right — and the donors. Not just opposition to Trumpism, but opposition to the money/power structure that enables it.

If you’re in or near NJ‑11 — or you just want to back more unbought candidates nationwide — consider donating or signing up to volunteer.

Donate Volunteer Why I’m Running Campaign Site

See all endorsements →

Endorsement: Claire Valdez for Congress (NY‑07)

2026-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer Issues Campaign Site See All Endorsements

This is Endorsement #12 — for Claire Valdez, running for Congress in New York’s 7th Congressional District (NY‑07).

She’s an Assemblymember, a union organizer, and a proud democratic socialist running a campaign centered on housing, healthcare, and workers’ rights.

She’s also been endorsed by labor leaders, including UAW President Shawn Fain, and by Zohran Mamdani.

Why this endorsement

Labor movement candidate. A working‑class, union‑rooted voice who talks about corporate power like it’s real (because it is).
Affordability first. A serious focus on housing costs, healthcare, and dignity for working people.
Solidarity beyond borders. Clear opposition to funding forever wars, and a willingness to stand up against systems that cage and terrorize working families.

If that’s the kind of representation you want in Congress, chip in, volunteer, and share the campaign.

Donate Volunteer Issues Campaign Site

See all endorsements →

Great TV Shows - Part 4

2026-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

See Part 1 Here See Part 2 Here See Part 3 Here You’re viewing Great TV Shows - Part 4 See Part 5 Here See Part 6 Here

See also: Amazing Movies: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6 • Part 7 • Part 8 • Part 9 • Part 10 • Part 11 • Part 12 • Part 13 • Part 14 • Part 15

Five TV picks — darkly funny crime, a classic cold-case procedural, two big Apple TV+ comedies, and a Hollywood satire.

Fargo (Hulu)

Anthology of darkly comic crime tales — each season stands alone, the casting is always great, and the tension sneaks up on you.

Cold Case (HBO Max)

Detective Lilly Rush reopens dormant Philadelphia homicide investigations — a procedural with real emotional weight and great period flashbacks.

Ted Lasso (Apple TV+)

An American football coach is hired to manage a British soccer team — funny, warm, and ridiculously easy to binge.

The Studio (Apple TV+)

Seth Rogen plays the newly appointed head of a movie studio, trying to keep movies alive while juggling corporate demands, egos, and chaos.

Platonic (Apple TV+)

Two former best friends reconnect in midlife — strictly platonic, wildly funny, and destabilizing in the best way.

See all TV lists →

Movies That Make You Think — Part 15

2026-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 15

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Four Hulu picks with that “hangs in your head afterward” quality — rights, paranoia, digital labor, and family history.

Call Jane (Hulu)

A story about how quickly “normal life” becomes an emergency — and what people do when the system gives them no safe options.

Neighborhood Watch (Hulu)

A tense mystery built around one question: if you think you saw something terrible happen, how far do you go to prove it?

American Sweatshop (Hulu)

A thriller with a very modern premise: what happens to your brain — and your moral compass — when your job is to stare at humanity’s worst content all day.

A Real Pain (Hulu)

Two cousins travel through Poland to honor their grandmother — funny, uncomfortable, and surprisingly moving as old dynamics surface.

See all movie lists →

EVERY politician should be doing this. [Video]

2026-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

EVERY politician should be doing this.

His whole team was meeting with everyday New Yorkers — and they are ALL TAKING NOTES.

This is what leadership looks like: show up, listen, and document what people are actually struggling with.

One Solution To Extreme Inequality In Practice Today

2026-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

This is a really great video — concrete, high‑signal, and focused on a real policy solution in practice (not theory).

If you have a YouTube account, please subscribe to More Perfect Union — they consistently publish strong reporting that’s worth supporting.

Also: Italy is just one place where co‑ops are being used and succeeding. Worker co‑ops, credit unions, and other cooperative models exist all over the world; and when done well, they’re a practical way to reduce inequality, keep wealth local, and build organizations that solve real problems without funneling all gains to a tiny ownership class.

The Liberty Pear: Best of 2025

2025-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

Welcome to the “Best of 2025” — a single page that pulls together my absolute top posts from the year.

Must Watch Videos

• James Talarico & 20 Undecided Voters | Must Watch Video

One of the most impressive long‑form political conversations I’ve seen: unscripted questions, real listening, and clear answers.

• The One Video You Need to Watch

The core message on persuasion + pro‑worker populism that I think is essential for rebuilding trust and winning elections.

• David Hogg: Elect People Who Fight for Us (Video)

David Hogg on what it takes to build a winning party that actually fights for people.

Politics / Election Reflection

• Zohran Wins Primary - What Is The Playbook?

What actually powered the upset — authenticity, affordability, and organizing — and the simple playbook others can copy.

• Election Reflection: Zohran Street Interviews From Nov 15, 2024

Zohran Mamdani hits the streets after the 2024 election to ask voters why they turned to Trump, or stayed home.

• Zohran Has Net Positive Favorability Nationally Among Young Conservatives!

A surprising poll result (net +1) that reinforces the power of persuasion‑first, pro‑worker populism.

Essays / Must-Reads

• Combating Misinformation In The Post-Truth Reality

A friction‑minimal action plan — what to post, how to engage, and when to disengage — to puncture propaganda at scale.

• Lump Of Labor Fallacy

Why more workers don’t mean fewer jobs — a foundational concept for reading modern labor debates.

• Tariffs Part 3: Foreign Relations, Reactions, and Retaliations

A clear look at how tariffs escalate into retaliation and weaken U.S. alliances and national security.

• Homes For All - How Socialists Have Solved Housing

Zohran Mamdani’s concise primer on social housing models that tackle root‑cause affordability — watch, then share.

• Still think capitalism is the answer???

Zuckerberg says Meta’s AI race could misspend hundreds of billions — a quick note on capitalism’s resource allocation, plus the clip.

Media / Resources

• Independent and Nonprofit Media

A curated list of nonprofit, independent, and worker‑owned outlets worth supporting.

• Some Books Worth Reading

A short reading list — smart, high‑signal picks worth your time.

History

• The Extinction of the Nightingale

A forgotten story brought to life — underappreciated history with modern relevance.

Series / Overviews

• Endorsements

All entries in the Endorsements series — candidates who center working people, affordability, and anti–big money politics.

• Charity Spotlight

Quick features on high‑impact organizations doing concrete work — with links on how to give.

• The Movies Lists

All the Movies That Make You Think lists in one place.

• Must Watch Videos

A running list of posts that include embedded videos.

Movies That Make You Think — Part 14

2025-12-29T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 14

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Four very different stories, but all with that “hangs in your head afterward” quality — ambition, pressure, systems, and consequences.

Molly’s Game (Netflix)

A sharp true‑story crime ride about high‑stakes poker, power, and how fast “exclusive” becomes dangerous.

F1: The Movie (Apple TV)

A slick racing drama about a veteran’s last shot, a young hotshot, and the brutal math of speed + teamwork.

The Accountant (Prime Video)

A surprisingly cold‑blooded action thriller where the protagonist’s “skillset” is equal parts spreadsheets and violence.

Worth (Netflix)

A sober drama about the impossible problem of assigning a dollar value to loss — and the politics around it.

See all movie lists →

Kat Abughazaleh Interview (6 Months Later)

2025-12-28T00:00:00+00:00

A great interview with Kat Abughazaleh — worth watching if you want a candid update and a clear sense of how she thinks. You also get a sense of how innovative this campaign is, and the genius behind it.

If you missed it, here’s my endorsement:

Endorsement: Kat Abughazaleh for Congress (IL‑09)

Charity Spotlight - Safe Horizon

2025-12-24T00:00:00+00:00

Get Help — Safe Horizon Give Now Learn More

Quick spotlight on a group that provides real, practical support to survivors — and does it at serious scale.

What is Safe Horizon?

Safe Horizon is a nonprofit that helps people impacted by domestic violence, sexual violence, child abuse, stalking, trafficking, and other forms of harm. Their work spans crisis help, advocacy, and longer‑term services — centered on what survivors need and choose.

Why I like recommending them

Direct + concrete. Real services and advocacy, not just awareness.
Survivor-centered. Help without judgment; support that respects agency.

How to support

Get Help — Safe Horizon Give Now Learn More

See all charity spotlights →

Charity Spotlight - Food Bank For New York City

2025-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

Donate — Food Bank For New York City Volunteer Learn More

Quick spotlight on a group that’s been a lifeline for New Yorkers facing hunger for decades.

What is Food Bank For New York City?

Food Bank For New York City is the city’s largest hunger relief organization, moving food through a network of hundreds of pantries and community partners across all five boroughs and pairing it with nutrition education and financial empowerment programs.

Why I like recommending them

Local and high‑impact. Directly serves New Yorkers where they live, shop, and learn.
More than a meal. Food plus tools — budgeting help, benefits access, and education.

How to support

Donate — Food Bank For New York City Volunteer Learn More

See all charity spotlights →

James Talarico & 20 Undecided Voters | Must Watch Video

2025-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

One of the most impressive on‑camera political conversations I’ve seen in a long time.

A Texas populist doing the hard part: James Talarico sits in the middle of twenty undecided voters, takes real questions without a script, and stays calm, detailed, and genuinely curious the whole way through. If you care about persuasion, listening, and showing up for people who don’t already agree with you, this is worth the time.

Charity Spotlight - American Cancer Society

2025-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Donate — American Cancer Society Learn More

Quick spotlight on a group fighting cancer through research, prevention, and direct support for patients and families.

What is the American Cancer Society?

The American Cancer Society (ACS) is a nationwide, community-based nonprofit focused on reducing the burden of cancer for everyone. They fund cancer research, run prevention and screening campaigns, and provide information, lodging, rides, and other support services for people facing cancer.

Why I like recommending them

Big, credible impact. Long track record of funding research and improving cancer care access.
Help that’s close to home. Local programs, rides, and support for patients and caregivers, not just national advocacy.

How to support

Donate — American Cancer Society Learn More

See all charity spotlights →

Endorsement: Nida Allam for Congress (NC‑04)

2025-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer Campaign Site See All Endorsements

This is Endorsement #11 — for Nida Allam, running for Congress in North Carolina’s 4th District (NC‑04).

She’s a Durham County Commissioner and the first Muslim woman ever elected in North Carolina, running a grassroots, no–corporate‑PAC campaign for working families.

Why this endorsement

Working‑class focus. Housing, wages, public schools, and healthcare at the center of the platform.
Bold progressive agenda. Medicare for All, climate action, reproductive justice, and an anti‑war foreign policy.
Movement over money. A local, immigrant‑family candidate powered by small donors and organizers, not billionaires.

If that sounds like your politics, chip in, volunteer, or share her campaign at nidaallam.com.

Donate Volunteer Campaign Site See All Endorsements

See all endorsements →

Movies That Make You Think — Part 13

2025-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 13

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

A fun mix this round — a true‑story crime ride, a stunt‑heavy blockbuster, a tense manhunt, and a larger‑than‑life music biopic.

American Made (Paramount+)

A pilot gets recruited into CIA work and winds up in over his head — covert ops, cartel money, and consequences.

The Fall Guy (Peacock)

A stuntman gets pulled into a mystery with real stakes — big action, movie‑making chaos, and a surprisingly sweet core.

Sovereign (Hulu)

A father and son tied to an anti‑government ideology spiral into a standoff and a manhunt — tense, grim, and very current.

Elvis (Netflix)

A high‑energy biopic that frames Elvis through fame, exploitation, and American culture — maximalist, loud, and hard to look away from.

See all movie lists →

Charity Spotlight - City Harvest

2025-12-11T00:00:00+00:00

Quick spotlight on a group keeping New Yorkers fed, not food wasted.

What is City Harvest?

City Harvest is New York City’s first and largest food rescue organization. They move surplus, good food from restaurants, groceries, farms, and manufacturers to food pantries, soup kitchens, and community partners across the city.

Why I like recommending them

Local and concrete. Directly serves New Yorkers.
Food waste + hunger. Uses food that would otherwise be thrown away to feed neighbors.
Enivronmental. Saving this food saves tons of emissions every year.

How to support

Donate — City Harvest

They also have ways to volunteer, fundraise, and start food drives if you want to plug in beyond a one‑time donation.

Need food or want to explore more?

Find Free Food in NYC Learn More

See all charity spotlights →

Endorsement: Brad Lander for Congress (NY‑10)

2025-12-10T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Campaign Site See All Endorsements

This is Endorsement #10 — for Brad Lander, running for Congress in New York’s 10th Congressional District (NY‑10).

In the Democratic primary for mayor this year, I ranked him second on my ballot — and I’m still excited to see him in this race.

He’s a long‑time organizer, housing advocate, and NYC Comptroller with a real record on affordability, tenants’ rights, and good government.

Why this endorsement

Serious about the work. Decades of organizing and governing, not just vibes.
Affordability + democracy. A campaign that connects economic fairness in NYC to fighting an increasingly authoritarian right.
Real contrast with Dan Goldman. I’ve been disappointed by Goldman’s record in this seat — too often on the establishment, status‑quo side when it comes to accountability and foreign policy. Lander would be a clearer, more pro‑worker, movement‑aligned voice here.

If that mix — experienced, pro‑worker, and willing to fight this moment — resonates with you, consider chipping in above.

See all endorsements →

Endorsement: Dan Osborn for U.S. Senate (Nebraska)

2025-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Platform Meet Dan Campaign Site See All Endorsements

This is Endorsement #9 — for Dan Osborn, running for U.S. Senate in Nebraska.

This one is a little different for me: Osborn is more ideologically moderate than some of my other endorsements, but still very clearly populist and working‑class — and I’m just as excited about this race because he can actually win statewide in Nebraska.

With Osborn in the Senate, you could count on his vote for a lot of core populist, pro‑worker legislation, even if we will not agree on every single issue.

Frankly, this is one of the most exciting campaigns this cycle - and can really give us a strong showing that is pro worker in November.

Why this endorsement

Winnable populist lane. A real shot at flipping a Senate seat with a candidate who still speaks to working people and corporate power.
Reliable ally on big fights. Someone you can realistically see voting the right way on many major populist priorities.

If that combination — win the seat + move populist legislation — resonates with you, consider chipping in above.

Donate Platform Meet Dan Campaign Site See All Endorsements

See all endorsements →

Charity Spotlight - Lawyers for Good Government (L4GG)

2025-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

Quick spotlight on a group that turns legal expertise into real‑world impact.

What is Lawyers for Good Government?

Lawyers for Good Government (L4GG) is a community of 125,000+ lawyers, law students, and activists using pro bono work to protect equal rights, equal justice, and equal opportunity — from democracy and the rule of law to civil rights and climate justice.

Why I like recommending them

They leverage specialized skills at scale — one organization coordinating thousands of pro bono hours where they matter most.

How to support

Donate — Lawyers for Good Government Read their mission & principles

If you’re in the legal world, their pro bono projects are also worth a look.

Also see other entries in the series:

See all charity spotlights →

Charity Spotlight - Trans Lifeline

2025-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

Quick spotlight on a group doing vital, concrete work for trans people.

What is Trans Lifeline?

Trans Lifeline is a peer‑run hotline and microgrants nonprofit for trans people.

Hotline: confidential peer support from trans operators
Microgrants: help with ID changes and basic survival costs

Why I like recommending them

By and for trans people.
Material help, not just talk.

How to support

Donate — Trans Lifeline

Monthly gifts help keep the hotline staffed and microgrants available.

If you or someone you know needs it

U.S. Hotline: (877) 565‑8860
More info: translifeline.org

See all charity spotlights →

Endorsement: Kat Abughazaleh for Congress (IL‑09)

2025-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer Campaign Site See All Endorsements

This is Endorsement #8 — for Kat Abughazaleh, running for Congress in Illinois’ Ninth District.

Her core line: Democrats need to do more to stop Trump and fight for working people.

Why this endorsement

Working‑class focus. Frames the race around working people, not donors.
Real primary contrast. Presses Democrats to confront Trumpism and the billionaire status quo.

If this matches your politics, chip in or volunteer.

Donate Volunteer Campaign Site

Kat on Bluesky Campaign Bluesky X / Twitter

See all endorsements →

Movies That Make You Think — Part 12

2025-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 12

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Four tense, character-driven crime stories about detectives, killers, and the cost of obsession — perfect when you want smart suspense and something to talk about after.

Collateral (Netflix)

A cab driver’s ordinary night turns into a high‑stakes tour of L.A. when a contract killer gets in his car — a neon‑noir thriller about chance, complicity, and what you do when you’re in too deep.

The Killer (Netflix)

A hyper‑disciplined assassin lives by routine and control — until a job goes wrong and every “rule” he’s built starts to collapse.

The Little Things (Netflix)

Two detectives — one haunted by an old case, one desperate for a win — fixate on a possible serial killer in 1990s L.A., where the mystery is as much about guilt and doubt as it is about evidence.

The Pledge (Hulu)

On the verge of retirement, a detective promises a grieving mother he’ll find her daughter’s killer — a vow that slowly consumes him in a quiet, devastating character study about faith, justice, and obsession.

See all movie lists →

Lina Khan On Zohran Mamdani, Corporate Welfare & the FTC | The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart

2025-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

VERY good interview.

Endorsement: James Solomon (Jersey City)

2025-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer Campaign Site See All Endorsements

This is Endorsement #7 for James Solomon, a reform‑minded member of the Jersey City Council (Ward E) focused on honest, responsive local government.

Why this endorsement

Serious about transparency and oversight.
Focused on nuts‑and‑bolts city services and quality of life.
Grounded, neighborhood‑level representation.

If you’re in Jersey City and this general posture matches your politics, back him this Decemeber.

See all endorsements →

Movies That Make You Think — Part 11

2025-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 11

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

I Don’t Understand You

A vacation spirals after a terrible mistake — a dark comedy about panic, language, and digging deeper holes.

The Ides of March

Back‑room politics and morality collide as a wunderkind strategist learns the cost of winning.

Zodiac

The hunt consumes everyone it touches — a procedural about obsession, evidence, and uncertainty.

Superman

A classic myth retold — ideals vs power, courage, and responsibility.

See all movie lists →

“We Will Not Bend”: Zohran Mamdani’s Historic Final Rally Speech Before NYC Election

2025-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

Wow.

Being here was one of the most inspiring and on-the-money times of my life. Zohran gets it, he is the cure for the party.

Zohran Mamdani - Reimagining NYC Through Safety and Affordability | The Daily Show

2025-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

REALLY great interview.

Thank You For 70k, Bluesky

2025-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

Thank you everyone on Bluesky for 70,000+ followers!

This community has been absurdly supportive. You’ve helped share long‑form explainers, pushed constructive debate, and kept the focus on working people and affordability. I’m grateful.

If you’re not on Bluesky yet, consider joining — it’s growing fast and the discourse is healthier than anywhere else I’ve used.

Bluesky Starter Packs

Zohran Mamdani on Flagrant

2025-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

I think this is one of the most interesting things I have watched regarding politics recently.

Everyone thinks of these types as being super right leaning, due to their misguided support of Trump. How can someone agree so much with Zohran and yet have voted for Trump.

THIS is what I have been talking about — it is not ideology driving voters and politics, it is anti-establishmentism and populism.

Hell Gate Live! with Zohran Mamdani, Democratic Candidate for Mayor of New York City

2025-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

Really great interview!

Endorsement: Omar Fateh for Minneapolis Mayor

2025-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer Vision See All Endorsements

This is Endorsement #6 — for Omar Fateh — a city‑level campaign that puts working people and affordability at the center, and is willing to confront big‑money interests that corrode public trust.

Local government is where the basics either work or don’t: housing, transit, public safety, city services. The case here is a posture that is persuasion‑first, coalition‑minded, and focused on building systems that actually function for ordinary people.

Why this endorsement

A city that works: Housing, community health, public safety, and working people at the core — not press releases.
Implementation posture: Execute consent‑decree reforms, ship the Safe & Thriving Communities plan, and fix broken delivery across departments.
Pro‑worker, persuasion‑first: Outcomes and affordability over donor theater; build coalitions that can actually govern.
Independent of big money: Willing to challenge entrenched interests and prioritize residents.

If this aligns with your politics, lend a hand. Campaigns like this are built, not bought.

Donate Volunteer Vision

See all endorsements →

Endorsement: James Talarico for U.S. Senate (Texas)

2025-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer See All Endorsements

This is Endorsement #5 — for James Talarico, an eighth‑generation Texan, former middle school teacher, Presbyterian seminarian, and state representative now running for the U.S. Senate. His profile blends moral grounding with practical know‑how: time in the classroom, time in the legislature, and the conviction to challenge the donor‑driven status quo.

The case is straightforward: root out corruption that distorts policy, and return power to working people. That posture — pro‑worker, persuasion‑first, and unafraid of entrenched interests — is exactly what I want to see more of in national politics.

Why this endorsement

Grounded in real life: Classroom experience and training as a Presbyterian seminarian inform a politics with empathy, discipline, and a service mindset.
Anti‑corruption: Willing to take on mega‑donors and the political machinery that props them up — not trim to it.
Bread‑and‑butter priorities: A focus on affordability and services that work — wages, housing, and health care over donor talking points.
Movement mindset: Neighbor‑to‑neighbor organizing and coalition‑building that can outlast a single cycle.

If this aligns with your politics, lend a hand. Campaigns like this are built, not bought.

Donate Volunteer

See all endorsements →

Endorsement: Cori Bush for Congress (MO‑01)

2025-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer See All Endorsements

This one’s personal. I’m making this Endorsement #4 for Cori Bush — because the coalition she represents is the one I want to grow: working‑class, affordability‑first, independent of big money.

It would be good on the merits to have Cori back in Congress. It’s also strategically important: a strong campaign here will drain resources from AIPAC that could otherwise be aimed at other pro‑worker candidates. If you share that calculus, consider donating or volunteering above.

Why this endorsement

Working people first: Housing, health care, wages — not donor talking points.
Independent of big money: People‑powered posture; say what you mean, do what you say.
Movement building: Organizing that outlasts one cycle or one candidate.

If you’re aligned with the platform and the posture, chip in or volunteer. Campaigns like this are built, not bought.

Donate Volunteer

See all endorsements →

Endorsement: Abdul El‑Sayed for U.S. Senate (Michigan)

2025-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer See All Endorsements

Abdul comes out of public health and it shows. Less press‑release talk, more “does it work?” That bias toward building things that actually function is why I’m making this Endorsement #3.

What I’m backing:

Fix‑things mindset: Public program experience; cares about outcomes, not vibes.
Affordability first: Make life cheaper — housing, health care, wages that keep pace.
Independent coalition: People‑powered, and endorsed by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.

If this reads like your politics, lend a hand. Campaigns like this are built, not bought.

Donate Volunteer

See all endorsements →

Endorsement: Zohran Mamdani for NYC Mayor

2025-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

Donate Volunteer See All Endorsements

This shouldn’t be a surprise — I’ve been writing about Zohran for months — but I want to make it official in my Endorsements series. This is Endorsement #2.

If you’ve followed along, you’ve seen these earlier posts:

Put simply: Zohran has been the clearest, most consistent voice on affordability in NYC politics — and he’s backed it up with shoe‑leather organizing, coalition‑building, and a refusal to bend to big‑money interests. That’s the combination that wins elections and, more importantly, delivers for working people.

Why this endorsement

Working‑class focus and relentless emphasis on affordability — rent, transit, groceries, housing.
Persuasion‑first, pro‑worker populism that resonates far beyond the traditional base.
Independence from big‑money politics; organizing power rooted in real people.

If you’re aligned with the platform and the posture, chip in or volunteer above. Let’s keep organizing — and keep the focus on working people.

Donate Volunteer

See all endorsements →

Endorsement: Graham Platner for U.S. Senate (Maine)

2025-10-04T00:00:00+00:00

Donate to Graham Volunteer See All Endorsements

Introducing Endorsements: brief, occasional picks where I back populist candidates who focus on working people, affordability, and reject big‑money / establishment politics. This is Endorsement #1.

Graham Platner is a Marine and U.S. Army veteran, oyster farmer, and a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine; running to defeat Susan Collins, take on her billionaire backers, and win back the seat for working Mainers being priced out of their homes.

His message is direct and populist: “Mainers first. Maine Always.” He argues that an economy designed by and for billionaires has priced out regular people, calling it a “billionaire economy”, and makes affordability the north star of his campaign.

Why this endorsement:

Working‑class focus: Platform centers housing affordability and cost of living for Mainers.
Anti–Big Money posture: Explicitly rejects a politics “by, of, and for billionaires.”
Authentic profile: Oyster farmer, working class background matches the message.

He gets it.

Notables and links:

Endorsed by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Press Herald, Sep 1, 2025): Article
Grassroots giving via ActBlue: Donate
Get involved: Volunteer
Events calendar: Mobilize

If you’re aligned with this platform and want to help flip the seat, chip in or volunteer above. This is the first entry in a new Endorsements series — more to come.

See all endorsements →

Great TV Shows - Part 3

2025-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

See Part 1 Here See Part 2 Here You’re viewing Great TV Shows - Part 3 See Part 4 Here See Part 5 Here See Part 6 Here

See also: Amazing Movies: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6 • Part 7 • Part 8 • Part 9 • Part 10 • Part 11 • Part 12 • Part 13 • Part 14 • Part 15

Quick TV picks worth your time — strong writing, memorable characters, and fully bingeable.

Long Bright River (Peacock)

Long Bright River: With Amanda Seyfried, Nicholas Pinnock, Ashleigh Cummings, Callum Vinson. A Philadelphia police officer searches for her sister, an addict who has gone missing.

Andor (Disney+)

Andor: Created by Tony Gilroy. With Diego Luna, Denise Gough, Stellan Skarsgård, Kyle Soller. In an era filled with danger, deception, and intrigue, Cassian Andor embarks on a path that is destined to turn him into a Rebel hero.

The Dropout (Hulu)

The Dropout: Created by Elizabeth Meriwether. With Amanda Seyfried, Naveen Andrews, Michel Gill, William H. Macy. TV series that chronicles Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes' attempt to revolutionize the healthcare industry after dropping out of college and starting a technology company.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Hulu)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Created by Joss Whedon. With Sarah Michelle Gellar, Nicholas Brendon, Alyson Hannigan, Anthony Head. A young woman, destined to slay vampires, demons and other infernal creatures, deals with her life fighting evil, with the help of her friends.

See all TV lists →

Independent and Nonprofit Media

2025-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

These are all nonprofit, independent, or worker‑owned news sources. They are all a little different but one of the general themes for many of them is to aim to amplify truth, accountability, and power for working people — outside the incentives of billionaire-owned media. If this helps, please subscribe, share, and support your favorites.

You can visit each outlet’s site to subscribe to their newsletters and follow their social accounts — even on platforms you don’t use much. It helps boost reach and puts their work in front of people who might not otherwise see it.

Organizations

National / General

More Perfect Union - (perfectunion.us)

Nonprofit newsroom building power for working people through video journalism and investigations.

Democracy at Work - (democracyatwork.info)

Nonprofit media and education on worker cooperatives, economic democracy, and a more just economy.

PolitiFact - (politifact.com)

Fact-checking from the Poynter Institute; rates claims with the Truth-O-Meter.

ProPublica - (propublica.org)

Nonprofit investigative newsroom focused on accountability and abuses of power.

Democracy Docket - (democracydocket.com)

Reporting and analysis on voting rights litigation and democracy issues.

The Marshall Project - (themarshallproject.org)

Nonprofit newsroom focused on the U.S. criminal justice system.

Center for Public Integrity - (publicintegrity.org)

Nonpartisan investigative journalism on inequality, politics, and policy.

Reveal (CIR) - (revealnews.org)

Investigative reporting from The Center for Investigative Reporting; audio, data, and visual storytelling.

Inside Climate News - (insideclimatenews.org)

Nonprofit newsroom covering climate, energy, and environmental justice.

OpenSecrets - (opensecrets.org)

Nonpartisan research on money in U.S. politics; campaign finance and lobbying data.

The Intercept - (theintercept.com)

Investigative journalism on politics, national security, and civil liberties.

Talking Points Memo (TPM) - (talkingpointsmemo.com)

Independent political news, analysis, and investigations.

Rest of World - (restofworld.org)

Global nonprofit newsroom covering technology's impact beyond the West.

News from the States - (newsfromthestates.com)

State-focused reporting from across the U.S., aggregating journalism from state-based newsrooms.

The Lever - (levernews.com)

Reader-supported investigative journalism on power, politics, and business.

Current Affairs - (currentaffairs.org)

Independent, ad‑free magazine of politics and culture — essays, reporting, and analysis.

Regional

Hell Gate (NYC) - (hellgatenyc.com)

Worker-owned local newsroom for New York City; reporting, investigations, culture.

THE CITY (NYC) - (thecity.nyc)

Independent nonprofit newsroom serving New Yorkers with accountability reporting and service journalism.

The 51st (DC) - (51st.news)

Washington, DC local news; policy, community, and impact reporting.

The Texas Tribune (TX) - (texastribune.org)

Nonpartisan, member-supported public-interest newsroom covering Texas policy and politics.

CalMatters (CA) - (calmatters.org)

Nonprofit newsroom explaining California policy and politics.

Racket (Twin Cities) - (racketmn.com)

Writer-owned, reader-funded local news for Minneapolis–St. Paul.

Individuals

Robert Reich - (robertreich.substack.com)

Economist and former U.S. Labor Secretary; commentary on economics, democracy, and labor.

Some Books Worth Reading

2025-09-28T00:00:00+00:00

Here are a few books worth reading — each of these you can learn a lot from (even the graphic novels).

Tap/click any cover to open its Amazon page in a new tab.

All titles / links

Still think capitalism is the answer???

2025-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

In a recent interview, Mark Zuckerberg (Meta) acknowledges that Meta’s AI race spending could “… end up misspending a couple of hundred billion dollars…“

By the way, this “couple hundred billion” is just Meta’s spend – not including Google, Apple, OpenAI, and the myriad of others involved, we are talking multiple trillion dollars invested (and admittedly potentially wasted).

It’d take less than 10 billion dollars / year to end homelessness in the country — but we are somehow okay with allocating trillions of dollars to something that may not pan out. And people say Capitalism is the most efficient way to allocate resources? No. Not even close. Most efficient at wasting resources that could be used to solve all major problems & making people rich enough to fully control our government; and therefore control us all.

Now, extrapolate this to all the other wasted and over-extended “investments” / purchases in the economy by billionaires. Tens of trillions of dollars misallocated.

We could just solve all the major issues in the country, if it were not for our capitalism.

See this snippet of the interview here:

Zuckerberg acknowledges that in this AI race Meta could " end up misspending a couple of hundred billion dollars..." pic.twitter.com/oqQ3KuwiAr
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) September 26, 2025

If you can’t see the embed above, here’s the direct link:

https://x.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1971593116651278583

Movies That Make You Think - Part 10

2025-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 10

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

A mix of smart thrills and real‑world stakes — perfect for a weeknight watch and a good post‑credits debate.

Moneyball (YouTube TV)

Strategy over swagger. Front‑office chess, statistics, and the politics of building a winner when everyone says it can’t be done.

Money Monster (Hulu)

A live TV hostage situation turns into a furious hunt for truth — media spectacle collides with market manipulation.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (Netflix)

A chilling look at charm as camouflage — how performance, denial, and power can hide the worst truths in plain sight.

Inside Man (Netflix)

A perfect heist that’s really about leverage — clever, controlled, and full of small reveals.

See all movie lists →

[Video] Mayor to Mayor: a conversation between Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani

2025-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

Some really great lessons in here, with a bit of “passing the baton” energy. Two populists talk mayoral politics and strategy.

Also it is remarked about why Zohran’s campaign and ability to govern is just so important. Truly a must watch.

David Hogg: Elect People Who Fight for Us (Video)

2025-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

In a recent appearance of the Adam Friedland show - David Hogg talks about how we shift our party back into a winning party that fights for people, among other topics.

Watch with an open mind, please!

Movies That Make You Think - Part 9

2025-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 9

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

These are sleek, smart, and fun — the kind of movies that are great on a weeknight and still spark a next‑day convo.

Lying and Stealing (Hulu)

A suave art thief teams up with a savvy con artist for one last score in L.A. — glossy, fast, and a little dangerous.

Now You See Me 2 (Netflix)

Slick illusionists get roped into a globe‑hopping heist; the fun is in the audacity, misdirection, and showmanship.

American Made (Amazon)

Tom Cruise flies straight into the wildest true‑story pipeline of the 1980s — CIA fronts, drug money, and unintended consequences.

Rob the Mob (Amazon)

A Queens couple starts knocking over mob social clubs — a gritty, true‑crime caper with heart.

See all movie lists →

Zohran Has Net Positive Favorability Nationally Among Young Conservatives!

2025-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

What the new Echelon poll shows

Headline stat: Fav 19% vs Unfav 18% — net +1 among young conservatives who’ve heard of him. Context: 42% never heard of him (pure awareness gap). Another 21% have heard but have no opinion — net neutral.

Zohran is definitely one of the (if not the) most left leaning major politicians in the country. Traditional logic would say he should have extremely low favorability. What is going on here?!!?!

This is the point: it’s NOT purely ideology moving votes & politics in modern times. It’s populism.

I wrote up the full Zohran playbook here: Zohran Wins Primary — What Is The Playbook?. These things work anywhere. Even in a conservative sample, the numbers say it’s not universally hated.

Also, if you only have time for one more thing, watch this — The One Video You Need to Watch. It pairs with the playbook: persuasion‑first, pro‑worker populism that makes the +1 net with conservatives who’ve heard of him make sense, once you understand and internalize the playbook.

Sources: Echelon topline (PDF) • Free Beacon write‑up

The One Video You Need to Watch

2025-09-18T00:00:00+00:00

I believe this video showcases a massive part of the answer to regaining lasting electoral power in the country.

The more we talk to people, spread this message, and elect people who are populists — the better chances we have in every election in the country.

West Virginia was once a union‑anchored, working‑class Democratic stronghold; as coal jobs and unions collapsed and national politics became polarized, the state realigned sharply to the GOP.

Is there any hope for the most “right‑wing” voting state to ever return to blue? Sanders thinks so…

Please watch with an open mind.

A pro‑worker, deliverables‑first populism that guarantees jobs, healthcare, and fair rules is the only message that stands a chance of rebuilding trust.

One’s Own Wrath

2025-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

“According to superstition, one who [seeks to] enact one’s own wrath is likely to bring that very wrath unto himself.”

— Thaddeus Bradley (played by Morgan Freeman), Now You See Me

Movies That Make You Think - Part 8

2025-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 8

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Just like the earlier lists — these are smart, watch‑now films worth your time. I highly recommend each of them.

Highest 2 Lowest (Apple TV+)

When a powerful music mogul (Denzel Washington) is targeted by a ransom plot, he is forced to fight for his family and legacy while jammed up in a life‑or‑death moral dilemma.

The Guilty (Netflix)

A demoted cop working the 911 desk races to save a caller who says she’s been abducted — all from the confines of a headset and a screen.

Stowaway (Netflix)

A Mars‑bound crew faces an impossible choice when a hidden passenger jeopardizes their life support — a tense moral puzzle in close quarters.

Now You See Me (Netflix)

A team of illusionists pull off audacious heists during live shows while an FBI agent and Interpol pursue them — a slick caper about misdirection, spectacle, and power.

See all movie lists →

Movies That Make You Think - Part 7

2025-09-03T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 7

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Just like the earlier lists — these are smart, watch-now films worth your time.

The Line

A university student lives life without fear of consequences.

Bordertown

A newspaper reporter investigates a rash of murders in the border town of Juarez, Mexico, and unearths a startling cover-up by the local authorities.

Emily the Criminal

Saddled with student debt and locked out of the job market, a woman gets involved in credit card scams — and is soon pulled deep into the world of crime.

To Catch a Killer

A perceptive Baltimore cop confronts her dark past while helping an FBI agent hunt down a sniper behind a lethally precise mass shooting spree.

See all movie lists →

Dream for NYC PAC Relaunches for the General

2025-09-03T00:00:00+00:00

Dream for NYC has relaunched for the general. Billionaires and corporate interests are already pouring dark money into pro‑Adams and pro‑Cuomo PACs. If they buy the megaphone, they shape the race. Our answer is a transparent, people‑powered PAC that can move fast, fund the message and the field, and win. This is how we defeat Adams and Cuomo and elect Zohran Mamdani.

🚀 Donate to Dream for NYC

Chip in $10 $25 $50 Make it monthly

Dream for NYC was exceptionally helpful in defeating Andrew Cuomo during the primary with rapid‑response ads and shareable receipts. We’re gearing up to do it again in November — and billionaire dark‑money PACs are already spending. The way we match that megaphone is with a transparent, people‑powered PAC.

Follow Dream for NYC on Bluesky

Helpful links to share:

🌐 Dream for NYC website: dreamfornyc.com
🗳️ Zohran wins, and the playbook that worked:
- Zohran Wins Primary — What Is The Playbook?
🚫 Cuomo receipts (shareable dossier):
- Death, Lies, and Money — The Andrew Cuomo Dossier

China’s Economy, Explained (Video)

2025-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

I have found that many people misunderstand how China’s economy works. This video is a clear, helpful resource that makes the model easier to grasp.

Great TV Shows - Part 2

2025-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

See Part 1 Here You’re viewing Great TV Shows - Part 2 See Part 3 Here See Part 4 Here See Part 5 Here See Part 6 Here

See also: Amazing Movies: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6 • Part 7 • Part 8 • Part 9 • Part 10 • Part 11 • Part 12 • Part 13 • Part 14 • Part 15

This one’s a TV edition: five standout series — recent and classic — that fit the spirit of these lists.

Platonic (Apple TV+)

A midlife reconnection between former best friends turns chaotic and hilarious as a strictly platonic bond upends marriages, careers, and comfort zones.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Hulu)

America’s longest‑running live‑action sitcom: five degenerates run a bar and spiral into ever more unhinged schemes — viciously funny, relentlessly satirical.

Silo (Apple TV+)

In a toxic future where humanity lives underground, an engineer questions the rules and uncovers forbidden truths — a gripping, claustrophobic sci‑fi mystery.

Fargo (Hulu)

Anthology of darkly comic Midwestern crime tales — each season stands alone with impeccable writing, mood, and mounting tension.

High Potential (Hulu)

A single mom with a brilliant pattern‑spotting mind becomes a police consultant, forming an unusual (and charming) crime‑solving duo.

See all TV lists →

How Socialists Can Fix the Housing Crisis (Video)

2025-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

This video explains socialist housing approaches, with examples, and suggests ideas (soon to be) New York policymakers like Zohran Mamdani can apply.

Movies That Make You Think - Part 6

2025-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 6

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Just like the earlier lists — these are watchable now and worth your time.

BlackBerry

The riveting true story of the meteoric rise and catastrophic demise of the world’s first smartphone; a whirlwind ride through the ruthlessly competitive forces of Silicon Valley at breakneck speeds.

Eenie Meanie

Samara Weaving is Eenie Meanie, a former teenage getaway driver dragged back into her unsavory past when a previous employer offers her the chance to save the life of her chronically unreliable ex-boyfriend.

Transsiberian

A Trans-Siberian train journey from China to Moscow becomes a thrilling chase of deception and murder.

Drinking Buddies

Two brewery employees hide their mutual attraction while dating others in this charming comedy.

See all movie lists →

Charity Spotlight - One Tree Planted

2025-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

Simple, high‑impact: $1 plants one tree.

What is One Tree Planted?

One Tree Planted funds reforestation worldwide. $1 plants one tree. They work with vetted local partners to restore forests, build biodiversity corridors, and expand urban canopy.

Projects span multiple regions and ecosystems (North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Pacific)
Emphasis on native species, local jobs, and long‑term maintenance
Clear project pages with objectives, timelines, and outcomes

Simple, measurable model
Local partners, real accountability
Stacked benefits — climate, water, soil, habitat

How to support

Donate — One Tree Planted

Prefer recurring? A small monthly gift (e.g., wildfire recovery or urban canopy) goes far.

Tips to maximize impact

Pick a theme and stick with it for 6–12 months.
Use employer matching when available.

See all charity spotlights →

The Liberty Pear: Best of All Time (So Far)

2025-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

Welcome to the mega “Best of” — a single page that pulls together the most impactful pieces across The Liberty Pear.

Start with the earlier highlight collections, then dive into the curated sections: Movies & TV, a light “Fun” break, and the full Election Reflection series.

Finally, explore the Must‑Reads for cornerstone policy and analysis posts, including Homes For All, Tariffs Part 1, and Nationalize AI.

Bookmark and share.

Start Here: The Earlier Highlight Collections

• The Liberty Pear Highlights (Nov ‘24 - Jan ‘25)

Foundational selections from the first two months—AI nationalization, tariffs explained, and early history/econ pieces. The best on‑ramp to the site.

• The Liberty Pear Highlights (Feb 2025)

Builds on the themes with a misinformation toolkit, China’s AI surge, and the foreign‑relations lens on tariffs (Part 3).

Movies & TV

All the lists in one place, plus a TV sampler.

Fun

A little palate cleanser — food and travel.

Election Reflection

Must-Reads

• Death, Lies, and Money - The Andrew Cuomo Dossier

An at‑a‑glance dossier of Cuomo’s scandals, donor networks, and abuses of power—with primary‑source receipts you can share.

• Zohran Wins Primary - What Is The Playbook?

What actually powered the upset—authenticity, affordability, and organizing—and the simple playbook others can copy.

• Homes For All - How Socialists Have Solved Housing

Zohran Mamdani’s concise primer on social housing models that tackle root‑cause affordability—watch, then share.

• Tariffs Part 1: An Introduction

A plain‑English primer on who pays (importers/consumers), when tariffs are defensible, and how broad tariffs boomerang into inflation and retaliation.

• Nationalize AI - Part 1 - Defining The Problem

Frames the stakes of frontier AI and outlines a transparent public model to socialize gains, protect labor, and rein in dangerous incentives.

• Combating Misinformation In The Post-Truth Reality

A friction‑minimal action plan—what to post, how to engage, and when to disengage—to puncture propaganda at scale.

• Building 7

The day’s third collapse, mapped in time and place—context, images, and a quiet history many never saw on TV.

• Paradox of Thrift, Fallacy of Composition, Austerity, and Second-Order Thinking

A crisp tour of counterintuitive macro ideas (thrift paradox, composition fallacy, austerity) that trains true second‑order thinking.

• The Future: Made In China

China’s fusion record and broader energy projects — and why a unified U.S. moonshot approach matters.

• 2025 Economic Thoughts & Predictions

Clear-eyed forecast on tariffs, labor, and the risk of stagflation — with links to the deeper tariff series.

• Lump Of Labor Fallacy

Why more workers don’t mean fewer jobs — a foundational concept for reading modern labor debates.

• What Are Externalities?

A practical guide to the unseen costs markets don’t price — with timely examples and why policy must correct them.

• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Essential quotes for the present — moral clarity on justice, poverty, and courage.

• Then, Jesus Said…

A sharp, secular reflection on modern “Christian” hypocrisy through the lens of Christ’s teachings.

• The Extinction of the Nightingale

A forgotten story brought to life — underappreciated history with modern relevance.

Homes For All - How Socialists Have Solved Housing

2025-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

From a handful of years ago – Zohran Mamdani describes Socialist housing policies that solve the root cause issues of housing crises.

Movies That Make You Think - Part 5

2025-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 5

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Just like part 1, 2, 3, 4 - these are all movies I have watched, that can make you think - about all kinds of things and how they relate to society and even politics/similar things. I highly recommend each of them. Some of these here are kind of more fun this round. These are on a variety of services.

Secret in Their Eyes

A team of detectives is torn apart when one of their children is brutally murdered. The ensuing 13-year investigation ends with a shocking secret.

The Amateur

A CIA decoder hunts for his wife’s killers, his intelligence serving as his ultimate weapon.

The Pickup

A routine cash pickup takes a wild turn when mismatched armored truck drivers Russell (Eddie Murphy) and Travis (Pete Davidson) are ambushed by ruthless criminals led by savvy mastermind Zoe (Keke Palmer). As chaos erupts, the unlikely duo must navigate danger, clashing personalities, and one very bad day that keeps spiraling out of control.

Night Always Comes

Facing eviction in a city her family can no longer afford, a woman plunges into a desperate and increasingly dangerous all-night search to raise $25,000.

See all movie lists →

Death, Lies, and Money - The Andrew Cuomo Dossier

2025-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

These are just some of the scandals and corrupt donor connections that Cuomo and his Super PAC has. Each of these is just a piece of the corruption puzzle.

Please considering sharing this to anyone who is on the fence about the Mayoral election and/or a Cuomo supporter.

🚨 Cuomo Scandals & Abuses of Power

ProPublica: Cuomo Undercounted Nursing-Home COVID Deaths by ~50%
Officials deleted thousands of nursing-home fatalities from public tallies, protecting Cuomo’s halo while families grieved in the dark.

Politico: AG Report Details Pattern of Sexual Harassment
Groping, forced kisses, threats, and a smear machine aimed at the women who dared speak up.

Gothamist: Assembly Report — Staff Ghost-Wrote Cuomo’s $5 M Book
Top policy aides moonlighted as ghostwriters while frontline workers rationed PPE—Cuomo cashed the check.

NBC NY: Taxpayers Stuck With $60 M for Cuomo’s Legal Bills
State picks up the tab while Cuomo’s lawyers rifle through accusers’ medical files.

Politico: Cuomo Lawyers Demand Accuser’s Gynecological Records (Jun 23 2025)
Tax-funded legal team subpoenaed a survivor’s gynecological and therapy records to dig up “dirt.”

NBC NY: Cuomo Drops the N-Word on Live Radio
Blurts the slur, then blames “context.” Bigotry in real time.

Times of Israel: Cuomo on Sukkot — “These People and Their F’ing Tree Houses”
Mocks a Jewish holiday rite as a nuisance—bigotry, unfiltered.

NY Times: Cuomo Killed the Moreland Anti-Corruption Panel
Ethics panel subpoenaed his donors on Monday; Cuomo shut it down by Friday.

NY Focus: Cuomo Hid Lobbyist Bundlers From Disclosure
Six-figure fundraisers filed under “miscellaneous” to dodge NYC rules.

Politico: “Clerical Errors” Hide Lobbyist & PAC Cash
Misspelled names and blank PAC IDs magically erase conflicts.

NY Times: Cuomo & Christie Veto Port Authority Reform (Dec 28 2014)
Bipartisan overhaul killed so cronies keep milking the patronage trough.

Politico: Buffalo Billion Boondoggle Tied to Elon Musk (Mar 22 2025)
In Cuomo’s NY - there are hundreds of millions for billionaires, but nothing for the rest of us

New Yorker: Cuomo’s War on Prosecutor Preet Bharara
Stonewalled, smeared, and tried to kneecap the U.S. attorney who sniffed too close.

Hell Gate: Cuomo Drives Like an Asshole
Speeding tickets, hydrant blocks, crosswalk hogging—rules for thee, not for me.

NY Post: Cuomo Hid $2.6 M in Nuclear-Stock Options (Jun 16 2025)
Preached clean energy transparency while sitting on undisclosed options.

The Intercept: Andrew Cuomo’s Biggest Donors Rake In Millions From ICE
Ethically horrific; Cuomo owned by some of the countries worst people who make money from ICE.

Hell Gate: Cuomo Courts Epstein-Linked Financier Glenn Dubin
Dubin’s Epstein baggage didn’t stop Cuomo from taking six-figure donations.

Capital & Main: Cuomo Took $25K From Weinstein’s Law Firm
Halts Weinstein probe, pockets $25K from the mogul’s defense team—survivors sold out for campaign cash.

Guardian: Cuomo Slipped Nursing-Home Immunity Into Budget After Industry Donated Millions
Immunity for the rich, death for the rest of us.

Streetsblog: Cuomo’s $2 B “Wrong-Way” LaGuardia AirTrain Clears FAA Hurdle
FAA signed off on Cuomo’s $2 billion, 1.5-mile people-mover that drags riders east—away from Manhattan—before forcing a double-back; critics call it a vanity loop that wasted federal time, ignored 47 cheaper alternatives, and was rammed through by Cuomo’s pressure on the agency.

Times Union: Cuomo Team Covered Up Broken Bolts on Mario Cuomo Bridge
Whistle-blowers say hundreds of cracked high-strength bolts were hushed up to keep ribbon-cutting on schedule—Cuomo risked a Hudson River catastrophe for a photo-op.

NPR: Reports — Cuomo Administration Gave Special COVID Testing Access to Family & VIPs
While ordinary New Yorkers queued for hours, state health officials were dispatched to swab Chris Cuomo and other relatives at their homes—pandemic favoritism at its sleaziest.

Politico: Cuomo Withheld Vaccines to Stall Citi Field Mass-Vax Site
Petty feud with Mayor de Blasio? Cuomo sat on doses for weeks, delaying a Queens vaccine hub out of spite—millions in Gotham left waiting while his ego took the wheel.

Observer: “Hospital Hatchet Man” Stephen Berger (Apr 3, 2006)
Berger—tapped for Cuomo’s hospital overhaul—was long known as a hospital “hatchet man” by critics for pushing closures and consolidations.

NY Times: Joseph Percoco, Ex-Cuomo Aide, Found Guilty (Mar 13, 2018)
Cuomo’s closest aide was convicted in a bribery scheme involving state projects (some counts later vacated in 2023); the scandal exposed pay‑to‑play around Cuomo’s economic development machine.

NEW

Audio: Cuomo Counts on Trump’s Help to Win – The New Republic (Aug 19 2025)
At a Hamptons fundraiser (🙄), Cuomo is heard predicting, foreshadowing, and hoping for a Trump (and other top GOP insider) boost for his mayoral bid; telling GOP voters to ditch Sliwa to “stop Mamdani”. Also heard boasting he “knew the president very well,” a far cry from his public posture.

Cuomo Campaign Distances Itself From Right-Wing “Memelord” – City & State NY (Aug 19 2025)
A professional meme-maker with a far-right shitposting feed claimed credit for a Cuomo meme; the campaign scrambled to say he’s “not with us” and “not paid” — while admitting they used one of his suggestions. Embarrassing flirtation with the MAGA meme machine.

NY Daily News: Cuomo’s Campaign Unlocked Matching Funds on Donations from Minors (Sep 10, 2025)
Report: Contributions from minors were used to trigger public matching funds, in apparent violation of NYC Campaign Finance Board rules. Weird, illegal, AND corrupt.

NY Post: Kerry Kennedy Slept in Bathroom to Avoid Cuomo’s Abuse
Biographer Michael Shnayerson recounts that near the end of their marriage, Kerry Kennedy sometimes slept in a locked bathroom to protect herself from Cuomo’s bullying and abuse.

🏙️ Real-Estate & Landlord Money — Rent-Hike Royalty

Donor & Link	Cash	What They Expect
Durst Organization	$100,000	Luxury-tower landlord banking on weak rent laws that hurt the everyday guy.
Peter Fine / Atlantic Development	$250,000	Unethical bronx developer needing fast rezonings
Fisher Brothers	$100,000	Fisher Brothers epitomizes NYC pay-to-play real-estate corruption.
Halmar International	$250,000	Contract builder eyeing fat infrastructure bids
24 “Doing Business” list Donors	$2,700,000	Contractors stuffing the war chest for favors
Landlord PAC “Housing for All”	$2,500,000	Built to kill rent control & stabilization, eviction bans, and more.

🟥 Trump-Toolbox Donors — Red Cash in a Blue Wrapper

Donor & Link	Cash	GOP / Trump Tie
Bill Ackman	$250,000	Hedge-fund megaphone, Trump & DeSantis booster
Ken Langone	$50,000	Home-Depot co-founder, GOP mega-donor
167 Other GOP Donors	—	Koch-network lawyers, MAGA bundlers, GOP mega money, etc

💸 Billionaire & Tech Titans — Policy Pay-to-Play

Donor & Link	Cash	Desired Favor
Michael Bloomberg	$8,300,000	Wall-St tax breaks and soft-pedaled policing legacy
Barry Diller	$250,000	Media titan fighting NYC digital-ad levy
Alice Walton	$100,000	Walmart heiress cheering anti-union signals
Reed Hastings	$250,000	Netflix chief lobbying against streaming surcharges
DoorDash	$1,000,0000	Gig-app giant fighting delivery-worker minimum-pay rules & e-bike regulation
Lyft	$15,000	Lobbying to pay it’s drivers less
Daniel Loeb	$250,000	Hedge-fund raider crusading against millionaire’s tax
Matt Hulsizer	$250,000	High-frequency trader pushing to kill stock-transfer fee

In November - say NO to Cuomo.

Zohran Wins Primary - What Is The Playbook?

2025-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

Victory! Zohran Mamdani is the Democratic nominee for NYC mayor. Oh, and he sent Cuomo back to the suburbs… for now at least.

This post is not really meant to go into a ton of analysis and detail of the voting numbers - and is more so snippets from primary sources or more about the politics itself.

The source that has been most helpful, since before the election was even close to over has been Michael Lange’s blog.

I had a lot of hope, and more-or-less felt good about the chances going into election day. It was palpable around the city - the energy for Zohran, and also knowing scale of the volunteering difference (again, seeing it – I saw dozens of Zohran canvassers the last week or so).

Did I expect it to be over, and Cuomo conceding election night?? No.

What exactly are some of the most unique (and most interesting to me) about what Zohran accomplished?

1. Zohran’s volunteering force

Zohran managed over 50,000 volunteers who knocked on over 1.5 million doors.

This is shocking, compared to this - the paid Cuomo canvassing operation was a joke. As I previously mentioned - I saw a few dozen of canvassers on the streets for Zohran just in the last week or so. I never saw any Cuomo canvassers or staff, ever.

2. Obliterated the most well known NY political dynasty

Cuomo was known by every single voter - if not just because of his (pretty horrible time being Governor), but also for his father who was extremely popular.

Mamdani went from someone that literally no one knew, to polling to 1%, to absolutely obliterating Cuomo in the primary. Remarkable.

3. Drove unprecedented youth & new voter turnout

One of the reasons that the polls were off - was because the youth & new voter turnout was absolutely super charged.

The difference between this primary and the one 2021 is shocking.

4. Performed extremely well with places that support Trump

This, and the previous point are the two most important points - this is why we can define a playbook (later on in the article) based on learnings from Zohran’s campaign.

In addition to many segments of the Democratic base - Zohran did exceedingly well with this segment as well.

The economic populism that underline very few (right now) Democratic campaigns has some precedent for doing well in this cohort.

"Mamdani pointed to Bernie Sanders’ forty-two percent on Staten Island in the 2016 Democratic Primary as proof that an economic populist could resonate anywhere."" 

Source: Michael Lange - The Zohran Coalition

Bernie Sanders performance in the (by far) most conservative and Trump supporting borough foreshadowed Mamdani’s extremely strong performance (especially for someone so relatively “far left”).

I won’t go into more detail here around specifics - but take a look at this on specific figure from the same article:

Source: The Zohran Coalition - Michael Lange

You should definitely view that article for more details and analysis.

It should not be shocking to anyone paying remote attention to politics over the last decade or so, that Zohran did this relatively well with people who voted Trump.

Interestingly enough, right after the 2024 election - Zohran all but predicted his own win and this exact phenomenon in a street interview series he did: Election Reflection: Zohran Street Interviews From Nov 15, 2024 – definitely check this out before reading on because it is also important for the next section.

So how did he do this? AKA what is the playbook?

There were many people other than Cuomo and Zohran running in the primary - some very progressive candidates in the mix as well. So why Zohran?

There are many reasons, and they are all intertwined and interdependent - but lets go through the main ones.

1. Authenticity

If you see any of his videos, hear him speak, etc - it is immediately obvious that he is not just another politician. He is genuine and does not double speak like the others; he does not follow the same old scripted bullshit that you get from establishment PR trainers.

Many times during the primary, opponents or the mainstream media tried to make it about Israel — Zohran refused to compromise his views and conscience on this issue; despite what the talking heads think about the popularity or not of these views.

Another example is Zohran’s self description as a Democratic Socialist. Of course, this opens up attacks from others on the grounds of him being a “Socialist”, but he maintained this description and kept it in his social media profiles. How phony would it be if he moved away from it after self describing himself as such for so long and during his last campaign for the state assembly.

These two things are but examples of this, but there are plenty more from during the campaign.

Yes, ideology / people’s views on things do have an effect, as they always have (and yes Zohran’s policy focus was a large factor as well), – but ideology alone is not the most critical thing when winning elections in the modern era. This is critical to understanding why people who have otherwise unpopular policies can often win elections and vice versa.

Ultimately, voters trusted Zohran meant what he said and believes in the things he is campaigning on. That his ideas didn’t come from the same establishment Democratic policy making and focus group muck that everyone is tired of, but instead are genuine.

2. Focus on Affordability

The primary issue across the country and especially in this city - is affordability. Housing, transportation, groceries, everything.

Relentlessly talking about affordability, and the ability to both accurately and succinctly bring back most issues to the affordability crisis (especially in interviews or the debates) – is a large part of why this message was not lost in the fray. People are struggling, and with the authenticity they see in Zohran, they trust he will fight like hell for them and their families.

3. Authenticity and Focus on Affordability Drove Grassroot Efforts

As previously mentioned - the massive 50,000 volunteers that knocked on over 1.5 million doors was unprecedented. People don’t volunteer to knock that many doors for no one, or for someone they do not believe is authentic and actually able to help them and others.

Yes, the door knocking was massive. But also, if you look at advertising spend - you’ll notice the campaign spent almost all of its advertising money on traditional media sources.

For such a modern, youth filled movement - this feels odd? Right? Wrong – there was no need for much spending on social or primarily digital platforms because the campaign was able to generate tens of millions impressions naturally (earned media) on social, primarily with well done video content. These channels were saturated by the enthusiastic “Zohran base” reposting, sharing with others, etc - and then catching on virally.

4. The Attacks from The Establishment, Landlords, Billionaires

Throughout the campaign, but especially when it looked stronger and strong for Zohran - landlords, billionaires (many associated with Trump or heavily donated to his campaign), and the establishment of both parties went on the offensive to smear, attack, and work against Zohran - to the tune of tens of millions of dollars (vs Zohran’s ~8-9 million).

I won’t even go into the ridiculous, racist, and shameful lies that these groups attacked him with, here. If you haven’t seen, definitely give it a Google.

The fact that these groups were so alarmed and went on such a large offensive made it clear that Zohran actually was for the people and not the rich - this is a good sign to working class people. Not only this, every time news would come out about this, it gave Zohran more ammo on social, it gave volunteers extra reasons to knock a dozen more doors that week, etc.

Total backfire - thanks, morons!

All of these things gave so many who had lost it (even in the process itself), hope.

As you can see in the voters that Zohran won, the approach, etc – it is not about how far left the policies are, “Socialism”, or really ideology at all.

OKAY I have made all of these points - what is the short bulleted list of “The Playbook”

A deep and authentic commitment to:

Policies that put working class people over multimillionaires/billionaires.
Taking no corporate or special interest money.
Extreme focus on affordability.

This playbook gives any Democrat at the very least a fighting chance even the deepest of red areas, and is the key to winning back every branch of the Federal Government.

Sources / other things you should read!

Election Reflection: Zohran Street Interviews From Nov 15, 2024 - The Liberty Pear

The Zohran Coalition - Michael Lange

What Can Zohran Mamdani Teach Democrats? – G. Elliott Morris

The Mamdate of Heaven – Polling USA

Will the Democrats Learn from Zohran Mamdani’s Victory? – The Guardian

Zohran Mamdani: “This Is The Heart Of The Battle For The Future Of The Democratic Party” – The Lever

The Corporate Democrat’s Biggest Nightmare – Robert Reich

Zohran Mamdani on Why He Won – New York Magazine

Election Reflection: Zohran Street Interviews From Nov 15, 2024

2025-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

I have an ongoing series (kind of) that are posts / videos about the 2024 election and reflection on it - this is the latest in that series. Here are the rest of the posts: Election Reflection Series

Right after the 2024 election, Zohran Mamdani hit the streets on NYC (in some of the areas that had the largest shift to Trump) to see why voters turned to Trump or did not vote at all.

You’ll hear 2-3 of the same issues over and over again….

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@zohrankmamdani)

Call to Action: Let's Get Zohran Elected To Be The Next Mayor Of NYC.

2025-06-03T00:00:00+00:00

UPDATE: JUNE 8, 2025:

Every vote we move off of Cuomo and onto the second place candidate (Zohran!!) (and 4 other non-Cuomo) is a 2 vote swing. Attacking Cuomo has to be a top priority on social media. Worst case, we can perhaps convince some otherwise hesitant Cuomo supporters to stay home (1 vote swing).

Informing your friends, family, and social media followers about all of these things is critical at this moment until election day!

Why Act?

The acceptance and election of a corrupt, sexual harasser (according to the DOJ!) like Andrew Cuomo would be devastating for the Democratic Party and for our city. See more about why we should not rank Cuomo at all.

Zohran Mamdami has the policies, the support, and the leadership to represent our city and to be an example of what could save the Democratic party. I mean that!

Zohran is in second is within a few points when very likely votes are polled. It won’t take much to put him over the edge if we all band together.

Call to action

What can you do to help? Great question!

If you can volunteer, I’d recommend it. Even just a little bit of time can make a huge difference. This is the largest thing you can do to help the cause.
Follow on social media. I’ve listed the links below this section.
Tell one friend, or more! Spreading the word in any way is a huge help, even just in terms of name recognition.
Send information articles about Zohran to a friend and/or post it on social media.
Talk about the campaign and the hope on social in general!
Vote! If you are eligible, vote and rank Zohran #1 and do not rank Cuomo.

If we can get as many folks as possible to do just one/two of these these things - we can defeat Cuomo and elect someone who cares about us and the city!

Please, in addition - support the campaign and follow Zohran on socials:

If you give him a follow, a repost or two really helps!

Thanks, everyone.

Countdown: Zohran For NYC Mayor — A Reason a Day Until Election Day

2025-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

Every day, I am going to post another reason to vote for Zohran for NYC Mayor; right here on this post. Check back in every day!

Go here see my other/original “endorsement” post for Zohran

And also see my post about why YOU SHOULD NOT RANK CUOMO.

Day 4

(Saturday, May 31th)

Support Small Business

“Zohran will make it faster, easier, and cheaper to start and run a business in New York City, so that bodegas and corner stores stay open and dollar slices come back. He will cut small business fines in half, speed up permitting and make online applications easier, and increase funding for 1:1 small business support by 500 percent. And he’ll appoint a Mom-and-Pop Czar to make sure it happens.” (emphasis mine)

The lifeblood of the city are the small businesses - the pizza shops, the bodegas, bars, restaurants, etc - on every street. Without them there is far less culture and less unique about the city. We should be giving smaller businesses more advantages instead of overburdening them (which only serves corporate and big business’s interest).

“[small businesses] account for over 90 percent of all firms in the city and who employ nearly half of all New Yorkers within the private sector.” (emphasis mine)

Day 3

(Friday, May 30th)

Housing by and for New York.

The rent freeze is not the only housing policy that Zohran champions…

“As Mayor, Zohran will put our public dollars to work and triple the City’s production of permanently affordable, union-built, rent-stabilized homes – constructing 200,000 new units over the next 10 years.”

Housing and housing costs are a massive issue - and the construction of 200k new affordable, union built, rent-stabilized homes will reduce the cost of housing for everyone.

Additionally:

“For the additional housing we need, Zohran will initiate a Comprehensive Plan for New York City to create a holistic vision for affordability, equity, and growth.”

More housing, more affordable housing; a new hope for New Yorkers.

Read more details on the how in his housing policy memo.

Day 2

(Thursday, May 29th)

Not only does he have the policies - he has the support.

Okay, so…. This one is more about why you should actively support him right now; he has got the policies down - and now he is within striking distance of Cuomo.

Take a minute (literally its 1 minute long!) to watch this video from earlier in the week:

And more recently, from yesterday…

New York City 2025 Mayoral Poll: Mamdani Surges into Second…

In the final round of ranked choice voting in this Emerson poll, Zohran has closed it to an 8 point race. Remarkably close…

And still, 33% of people have not heard of Zohran yet – his ceiling is high!

Now is the time to band together, share this post, and tell your friends/family.

Day 1

(Wednesday, May 28th)

Fast, fare free buses. 🚎

“Public transit should be reliable, safe and universally accessible. But one in five New Yorkers struggle to afford the ever rising fare. Adding insult to injury: our city’s buses are the slowest in the nation, robbing working people of precious time for family, leisure and rest.” (Emphasis mine)

Source: www.ZohranForNYC.com/platform

Make sure to read the snippets on the platform page on what he commits to doing; but two of the handful of commitments are building priority lanes and removing the fares for everyone on every bus. This would be a remarkable quality of life improvement for millions of New Yorkers, immediately.

Not only that - increased capacity, free time, freedom of movement, etc - is a guaranteed boon to the businesses of New York.

Call to action

What can you do to help? Great question!

If you can volunteer, I’d recommend it. Even just a little bit of time can make a huge difference.
Follow on social media. I’ve listed the links below this section.
Tell one friend, or more! Spreading the word in any way is a huge help, especially just in terms of name recognition.
Send this article to a friend or post it on social media.
Talk about the campaign and the hope on social!

Please, in addition - support the campaign and follow Zohran on socials:

Zohran for NYC Mayor

2025-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

Many insist you’re not a genuine New Yorker until you’ve clocked a full decade here…. by that measure – I’m barely scraping by.

Others maintain it’s an inherited title, reserved exclusively for those born within the five boroughs.

To me, being a New Yorker isn’t about years on your lease or where you were born—it’s about team spirit, resilience, and an open heart. It’s showing up for your neighbors, celebrating the city’s vibrant diversity, and sharing in its highs and lows.

It’s welcoming newcomers with curiosity, lifting one another through storms both literal and figurative, and carrying on the magic that makes this place ours.

It’s the resolute and unwavering conviction that when our neighbor is lifted, we all rise, stitching our individual journeys into a tapestry of shared success — because here, it’s We, not Me.

On the topic of who should be our face and captain - I have written about the conclusion that a fair amount of us have already come to — Cuomo is not right for the city — and therefore you should not rank Cuomo at all.

If you want more reasons - you can read through his extensive list of unethical behavior that extends over 10 years; here.

Not only that - he used $61,000,000 (61 million!!!) of NY taxpayer money on legally defending himself. Corrupt, unethical. He’s no New Yorker.

By the way, this is all before the other disastrous bullshit he did as governor - including cuts to the MTA & Medicaid — with Democrats like this, who needs the GOP.

Zohran For Mayor

Currently in second place - Zohran Mamdani is a New York State Assemblymember running for mayor of NYC. Beyond the invigoration he has already brought to the city with his energy; he has an inspiring platform that gives hope and an aura that inspires faith.

Source: www.zohranfornyc.com

I won’t go on and on about him and his platform here — but here are some the top things in his platform (which you can fully read here) that I am most excited about:

Freeze the rent.
Fast, fare free buses.
- Buses are already one of my favorite things about the city - they are already great but they can be stellar (and free!).
City-owned grocery stores.
- Grocery stores without the burden of overhead or a profit motive will give us access to drastically cheaper groceries.
Various housing initiatives
- Housing prices are out of control, in addition to freezing the rent, Zohran will not just change zoning rules; but actually solve the issue to create affordable housing.
- In addition to all of this, he has a plan to crack down on bad landlords - which is way overdue.

Source: www.zohranfornyc.com

Hope for a better future - one where your leader that you elect actually does the things he promises; for the people - is rare, especially in politics these days; and that is what feels different about this campaign.

Hope for NYC.

Call to action

What can you do to help? Great question!

If you can volunteer, I’d recommend it. Even just a little bit of time can make a huge difference.
Follow on social media. I’ve listed the links below this section.
Tell one friend, or more! Spreading the word in any way is a huge help, especially just in terms of name recognition.
Send this article to a friend or post it on social media.
Talk about the campaign and the hope on social!

Please, in addition - support the campaign and follow Zohran on socials:

Stay tuned. I am going to be doing something special to countdown the election.

Thank You For 60k, Bluesky

2025-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

Thank you everyone on Bluesky for 60,000+ followers!

I did do one of these for 40k, and 50k, but 60k is just a hugeeee milestone!

I’ve been really grateful to find such a great community here and so many that have been supportive of my content here on my website. Finding great people and getting support has been far easier here than any other social network I have ever been on.

If you haven’t already - definitely start an account on Bluesky. It’s growing a lot and a lot of great voices are on there. The more folks on it, versus billionaire owned networks - the better off we will be.

Check out my collection of great starter packs that I have put together, if you are interested!

Bluesky Starter Packs

NYC, Do Not Rank Cuomo!

2025-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

Here in NYC, we have ranked choice voting for local elections — if you’re unfamiliar, check this out.

DO NOT RANK/VOTE CUOMO!

Cuomo has so many negative points to his politics & behavior that make him fully unqualified. If you forget, or just do not know yet - look up why he resigned from governor, look up the covid nursing home situation, and there are many other issues you can look up.

Click here for one list of all the unethical behavior.

Click here for a second list of all the unethical behavior and horrible actions as governor and before.

Not only is he completely unethical, and has proven so over more than a decade of unethical behavior – he used taxpayer money to defend himself!

Cuomo scandals cost NY taxpayers nearly $60 million in legal fees…

You can choose to rank up to 5 candidates. In order to give the best chance for our city to be free of Cuomo - you should rank 5 candidates that are not Cuomo.

UPDATE: I’ve made my choice for Mayor: Zohran for NYC

But I am making sure I rank 4 other people after Zohran and will NOT RANK CUOMO.

Also…

Click on the image under this to see the DREAM PAC’s website. A PAC that is tasked with defeating Cuomo.

Movies That Make You Think - Part 4

2025-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

You’re viewing Part 4

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Just like part 1, 2, & 3 - these are all movies I have watched, that can make you think - about all kinds of things and how they relate to society and even politics/similar things. I highly recommend each of them.

Runaway Jury

A gun manufacturer hires a jury consultant to score a favorable verdict in a landmark trial, but two scheming con artists have a different deal in mind.

Winner

Reality Winner, a brilliant, sarcastic young misfit from Texas with a relentless need for helping others, finds her morals challenged working as an NSA contractor, ultimately leaking Russia’s hacking campaign of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.

Blacklight

A troubled off-the-books fixer for the FBI finds himself in the middle of a deadly government conspiracy.

See all movie lists →

A Founding Father Quote a Day - Week 9

2025-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

This is the ninth recap of my new mini project, where I post a quote by a Founding Father each day to this Bluesky account.

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.“

- James Madison

”What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment . . .”

- Thomas Jefferson

”bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. education & free discussion are the antidotes of both.”

- Thomas Jefferson

”our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

- Thomas Jefferson

“Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it...“

- John Adams

”it is the great parent of science & of virtue: and that a nation will be great in both, always in proportion as it is free.”

- Thomas Jefferson

“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.“

- James Madison

Fortune a Day - Recap - Week 12

2025-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s my week 12 recap of my Fortune A Day project!

To stay on top of these daily, follow Fortune a Day on Bluesky!

A Founding Father Quote a Day - Week 8

2025-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

This is the eighth recap of my new mini project, where I post a quote by a Founding Father each day to this Bluesky account.

“When a broad table is to be made, and the edges of planks do not fit, the artist takes a little from both, and makes a good joint. In like manner here both sides must part with some of their demands, in order that they may join in some accommodating proposition“

- Benjamin Franklin

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence“

- John Adams

“Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech“

- Benjamin Franklin

“Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.“

- James Madison

”The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”

- Thomas Jefferson

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.“

- James Madison

“Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.“

- George Washington

Fortune a Day - Recap - Week 11

2025-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s my week 11 recap of my Fortune A Day project!

To stay on top of these daily, follow Fortune a Day on Bluesky!

Two More Polling Aggregates Show Approval In Freefall

2025-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

I wrote an article about a week or so that showed 538 (the gold standard of polling aggregates) had shown that disapproval was now higher than approval, a stunning reversal from already drastically underwhelming starting net approval versus other presidents. There are other really bad sets of numbers that were just coming out that you should check out in that article if you haven’t already. Unfortunately, ABC has dropped 538 among other things as a cost cutting measure - so their stuff is now unavailable.

Now - a week later: Two other polling aggregates show disapproval is higher than approval.

Reminder - polling aggregates weigh a bunch of different polls, all of which you can see on the pages. Definitely click through if you’d like to see - both of these include GOP funded / sourced polls in their numbers.

VoteHub Polls

Source

This one is an extremely large mover - from +17 approval to +0.4 disapproval! Wild.

RCP

Source

RCP leans conservatively, but even there - disapproval outweighs approval now. And it is +0.7 disapproval (which is higher than VoteHub).

You marry these numbers with the weaker than expected jobs numbers that recently came out…. you have a rough situation.

Next I will be looking at the consumer sentiment numbers that are coming tomorrow, and some other economic indicators. Widespread tariffs just now going into effect will likely depress all of these numbers significantly over the next 3-6 weeks.

A Founding Father Quote a Day - Week 7

2025-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

This is the seventh recap of my new mini project, where I post a quote by a Founding Father each day to this Bluesky account.

“Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it...“

- John Adams

”I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”

- Thomas Jefferson

“Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.“

- Benjamin Franklin

“And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right from the frame of their nature, to knowledge...“

- John Adams

“If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved.“

- Samuel Adams

“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.“

- Benjamin Franklin

”For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”

- Thomas Paine

Fortune a Day - Recap - Week 10

2025-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s my week 10 recap of my Fortune A Day project!

To stay on top of these daily, follow Fortune a Day on Bluesky!

Stunningly Bad Numbers Spell 'Bad News Bears' for Trump’s Economy & Approval

2025-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

A few major sets of data have dropped recently, showing that the new administration’s aggressive policies and rhetoric are both not resonating with Americans and causing significant economic pain.

Remember, Presidents usually start with a high to very high approval rating as they enjoy a honeymoon period while they start their term. Historically, many people who did not vote for a President give them a thumbs up during this period. In the polling aggregate 538 - Trump has never had above 50% approval so far in his second term; historically bad starting point (with the recent exception of Trump’s first term).

UPDATE: ABC has shutdown 538 to save on costs. Shortly after - a very similar aggregate site showed the move into net disapproval: VoteHug Polls. Interestingly, the movement is more dramatic from the start of the term until now.

If you’re unfamiliar with the 538 polling aggregate - it pulls in many polls and averages them based on ratings. It even includes many Republican funded polls.

While it was not particularly good for a newly elected President, he still enjoyed a relatively decent net approval average of +8.2 (approve - disapprove) at the beginning of the second term.

Net Approval Hits Negative

As of March 4th, his positive approval has turned to disapproval for the first time during the second term to +0.3 disapprove - less than 2 months since the inauguration.

This is a dramatic fall - and again, from +8.2 approval to +0.3 disapproval in this time is not normal, but in this case - observing the approach so far definitely tracks with large polling number decreases.

I will talk more about economic indicators later - but by the way - this is all before the largest impacts from the negative policies have hit Americans, it’s only just started. These numbers do not even take into account the tariffs that were put into place today. Inflation, economic slowdown, consumer sentiment - all are showing negative data already, fast, and will continue & escalate if these policies are not reversed and/or not pursued.

Does It Matter?

Yes – emphatically yes. Not only are members of Congress facing increasingly hostile town halls (from both Republicans and Democrats) - approval ratings does affect policy in both executive and legislative branches - but especially the latter. Of course, it is not going to completely change policy, but it does have an impact. Additionally, as the approval goes down - the benefit of loyalty to the administration by members of the GOP decreases; we’ve seen this in practice before during the first term. It becomes harder and harder to get anything through Congress and/or not face material backlash. The 2026 midterms are not as far off as they seem.

Economic Data Rapidly Deteriorating

See previous articles describing what some of the policies are - and what I explain/predicted their impacts to be:

Tariffs

My Economic Prediction (from Jan 19th)

2025 Economic Thoughts & Predictions

What you’ll see in the numbers below is the beginning of what I predicted in my 2025 Economic Predictions and Tariffs: Part 2 article (see above for both).

GDP estimates

A Federal Reserve Bank (non-partisan) - has changed their GDP forecast for Q1 2025 from a high of +3.9% to -2.8% — a 6.8% swing. I can not overstate how awful this is, and how quickly the threatening and implementation of tariffs, deportations, removing labor, and cutting of subsidies and other government spending - are impacting the whole economy. Additionally, and generally, chaos & bullying others as a governing strategy does not instill confidence in consumers and businesses.

Aggressive recession red flag, if GDP actually retracts to this extent - it’s all but a certainty recession will hit - and the jobs numbers will be very rough, very soon.

Checkout the release here.

Consumer Sentiment

“… consumer sentiment for the US was revised sharply lower to 64.7 in February 2025 from a preliminary of 67.8”

On February, 21st - consumer sentiment slipped to 64.7 —- the lowest in over a year. This is not a surprise - especially as tariffs continue to increase and more are threatened. I wouldn’t be shocked if we dropped to ~60 or lower by the time the next report is released March 14th.

“The decrease in sentiment was unanimous across groups by age, income, and wealth. The drop was led by a 19% plunge in buying conditions for durables, in large part due to fears that tariff-induced price increases are imminent. Expectations for personal finances and the short-run economic outlook both declined almost 10%, while the long-run economic outlook fell back about 6% to its lowest reading since November 2023. Meanwhile, inflation expectations for the year-ahead soared to 4.3%, the highest since November 2023. The five-year outlook increased to 3.5% from a preliminary of 3.3% and above 3.2% in January, the largest mom increase seen since May 2021.”

Source

Ipsos Consumer Tracker

On February 28th - Ipsos released their survey data:

“The latest wave of the Ipsos Consumer Tracker finds that just 37% of Americans are comfortable with their personal economic situation today, a 14-point decline from November 2024. While all age groups show significant declines, those ages 55+ show the sharpest drop-off….”

We will talk more about inflation in a bit but check this out:

“Along these lines, Americans also report seeing higher prices for things they have paid for in recent weeks. At least seven in ten say prices are higher now than they were this time last year for dairy (82%), their total grocery bill (81%), food at restaurants (73%), meat (72%), and fresh fruit/vegetables (71%).”

Staggering.

Source

Price Increases

There are many causes of inflation (in reality, we are talking about price increases) - supply and demand side of goods/services and of money. A lot of the inflation we saw after the pandemic was primarily caused by supply chain disruptions.

One other way to increase prices of goods for people is to raise taxes on the goods - which is what a tariff is. For more information on Tariffs - see my Tariffs Series.

Not only that - threatening them causes pricing increases by front loading demand, businesses preemptively raising prices to cover potential expenses, etc.

The latest CPI (Consumer Price Index) came in at a 3.0% increase. Source.

Small aside

By the way - check out the uncertainty index - its quite stunning. Uncertainty is as high as it during recessions.

Conclusion

It is very concerning that we are seeing signs of major demand softening (as tracked by both Consumer Sentiment and negative GDP estimates) - while seeing inflation continue to rise. This is a very nasty situation I described in my 2025 Economic Thoughts & Predictions (before all of this data came out!!!!) - stagflation & recession likely.

What’s especially amazing about the economic numbers is that this is fully self inflicted, it did not have to happen - but all Americans are (and will continue) paying the price. People are not going to continue to tolerate this level of self inflicted harm for long as it hits them in their

What’s Next?

Unless policy changes drastically, or a miracle occurs - we will continue to see all of these numbers get worse and worse.

I will also be looking with great interest at the jobs numbers – another major red flag would be if those massively miss expectations - or god forbid they’re negative.

BREAKING: 25% Tariffs on Mex/Can - 10% More On China

2025-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

Largest Tax Increase On Americans In Modern American History

This new Trump Tax on Americans is the largest in modern American History.

25% Tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and 10% more on China, went into effect today. Additionally, a 10% import duty was placed on energy products from Canada.

As of this morning, China has already retaliated with a 15% tariff on some U.S. exports such as farm equipment. And yesterday, Canada also announced that 25% tariffs would be imposed on $107 billion worth of American goods. We should expect to see retaliation from Mexico as well, although they’ve not announced yet (UPDATE: Mexico says they will announce retaliator measures on Sunday).

Mexico, Canada, and China are the United States’ three top independent country trading partners - putting taxes on a large portion of U.S. imports.

Impact

The impact has already started. As I’ve mentioned in other articles, the mere act of threatening to turn your back on a trade agreement or threatening tariffs causes disruptions in markets. Not only is demand front-loaded, businesses begin raising prices to cover potential expenses. And now, those impacts grow as tariffs set in and taxes begin to be collected.

We will see prices continue to rise sharply for food, clothing, cars, car parts, lumber, cell phones, computers, electronics, toys, appliances, beverages, gas and oil, etc. Yes, essentially everything. Oh, and anything made using those products (for example, lumber prices going up means housing prices go up) - supply chain disruption.

This is all before the retaliation tariffs take place. Ultimately, this is primarily an attack on the American consumer and working class.

For more information please see my articles on Tariffs:

And see my prediction for how this turns out:

2025 Economic Thoughts & Predictions

The Liberty Pear Highlights (Feb 2025)

2025-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

This is my second highlights post, for February 2025! I first want to start out with a bit about my first highlight post:

• The Liberty Pear Highlights (Nov ‘24 - Jan ‘25)

My first highlights post! This one is large because it’s 2 months. This has so many great posts, if I do say so myself. If you like a collection like this, definitely check that one out as well!

• Tariffs Part 3: Foreign Relations, Reactions, and Retaliations

Another addition to my tariff series. Discussion of the foreign relations aspect of tariffs.

• USAID

Theres a few articles I want to highlight on the consequences of potentially removing USAID and topics related to it. All of them have unique aspects - one thing remains across all of them; USAID helps the world and its people - yes - but it also helps America, and Americans in a significant manner.

• Combating Misinformation In The Post-Truth Reality

“How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!”

Mark Twain

Hard, yes; impossible…. no.

• The Future: Made In China, Part 2 - AI

A massive AI breakthrough came out of China that threw the stock market into a large downturn.

A Chinese AI startup, named DeepSeek - released an AI model that has comparable performance and sophistication as the state of the art American models.

• Movies That Make You Think - Part 3

Another post about some great movies I think you should watch! These are less head-heavy and have some more levity.

Fortune a Day - Recap - Week 9

2025-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s my week 9 recap of my Fortune A Day project!

To stay on top of these daily, follow Fortune a Day on Bluesky!

A Founding Father Quote a Day - Week 6

2025-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

This is the sixth recap of my new mini project, where I post a quote by a Founding Father each day to this Bluesky account.

“We may define a republic to be … a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior.“

- James Madison

“It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it“

- James Madison

”Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

- Thomas Paine

”Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny”

- Thomas Jefferson

“It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.“

- James Madison

“There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy.“

- John Adams

”For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”

- Thomas Paine

A Founding Father Quote a Day - Week 5

2025-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

This is the fifth recap of my new mini project, where I post a quote by a Founding Father each day to this Bluesky account.

“Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.“

- George Washington

“A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.“

- Alexander Hamilton

“Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.“

- George Washington

“There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.“

- George Washington

“A fondness for power is implanted, in most men, and it is natural to abuse it when acquired.“

- Alexander Hamilton

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.“

- George Washington

“The essence of government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.“

- James Madison

Fortune a Day - Recap - Week 8

2025-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s my week 8 recap of my Fortune A Day project!

To stay on top of these daily, follow Fortune a Day on Bluesky!

A Founding Father Quote a Day - Week 4

2025-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

This is the fourth recap of my new mini project, where I post a quote by a Founding Father each day to this Bluesky account.

“Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes“

- Benjamin Franklin

“You will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make good use of it.“

- John Adams

”We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

- Thomas Paine

”Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”

- Thomas Jefferson

“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge...“

- John Adams

Fortune a Day - Recap - Week 7

2025-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s my week 7 recap of my Fortune A Day project!

To stay on top of these daily, follow Fortune a Day on Bluesky!

USAID

2025-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

Source. License. Modified by cropping and compressing.

There’s a lot of misinformation going around about USAID - what it is, and fabricated false claims of fraud. I do not really want to get into all of that here - but if you are skeptical - please do some searching around online, such claims have been debunked. A simple search such as USAID misinformation will get you a bunch of information, from there you can read and see for yourself.

Click on each of the titles in the bulleted list below to go to the source articles. I highly recommend reading through them all, but ill provide quotes and stuff here too.

1. The Case For USAID

Adam Kinzinger is a former (Republican) congressman from the great state of Illinois - wrote this article which outlines his personal experience as well as why USAID is so important.

Quotes:

“As a member of Congress, I visited USAID programs in many countries including, among others, Pakistan, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Egypt. I saw how our aid literally saves lives and builds local economies. I also saw that along the way, USAID fulfills its secondary mission of promoting democracy and free markets. (Do you hear me conservatives? USAID promotes capitalism.) USAID also buys billions of dollars’ worth of wheat, rice, and soybeans from American producers”

“You could scour USAID’s projects and find other examples of waste and other scandals like the poppy-grower debacle. This is true in the case of every bureaucracy and is why it makes sense to consistently audit the agency’s activities which, by the way, is already being done. But if you want to have a special inquiry into USAID, I say, “Bring it on.” If there are ways to make it more efficient, to force greater focus on its mission, to reform its operations, let’s do it.”

Like I said above, it’s worth a read - and it is not too long - the personal experience with the agency is interesting as well.

2. US aid freeze claims first victims as oxygen supplies cut off

“A 71-year-old woman has died after her oxygen supply was cut off when the United States announced a freeze on aid funding.”

People are dying already, within days, of this fiasco. Do read the full article - theres a bunch of additional information regarding both short term and long term effects, and a lot of other information to understand the who/what/how this aid the richest country in the history of the world, provides.

3. USAID Freeze Could Hurt American Farmers

“President Donald Trump’s disruption of the U.S. Agency for International Development threatens to harm both poor people abroad and farmers at home.”

“While the U.S. is the world’s largest food donor overall, it ranks “way lower” than most European countries in donations per capita, said Hertzler, who grew up on a farm in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania.”

“That could cause problems for the $2 billion USAID spends annually buying food from U.S. farmers for relief efforts.”

What is interesting about this is that not only does this food feed people, much of who would starve to death otherwise, it also provides a 2 billion dollar subsidy for farmers in the U.S.A.. You remove this and many, many farms will go under and that is obviously a massive issue. Not only is this economically painful, it is also a national security concern - food is one of the few things that we absolutely have to have significant capacity to produce internally in case of war, famine, or external withholding from other countries.

4. USAID Probes Starlink’s Ukraine Operations, Adding Fuel to Musk Feud

Interesting how this was the first agency targeted. Interesting. Do some research into this 🍐😀.

I’d encourage everyone to do some research into USAID in additional to reading these articles above.

Combating Misinformation In The Post-Truth Reality

2025-02-10T00:00:00+00:00

“How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!”

Mark Twain

Hard, yes; impossible…. no.

The main issue we face as a pro-democracy and pro-American movement - is the extreme amount of disinformation being pushed by multiple adversaries - whether it’s foreign governments, self interested billionaires, or corrupted government officials.

Many, many, many Americans are lost in this cycle - consuming almost only media that is compromised in the above ways. These misinformation machines get tens of millions (or more) eyeballs - how can we compete and restore logic to America?

Each of us individually do not have the reach, but together we can make a massive difference – really! Together and engaged, we outnumber those who wish to spread misinformation.

By the way, if you do not have the energy to do these things - there is no judgement. Take care of yourself first and foremost!

Here’s my quick gameplan for individuals:

Posting facts and fact checks to all social media platforms - daily.
- This is the most important one, especially if you are followed by people consumed by misinformation.
- Don’t block people who are consumed by misinformation - by posting you are forcing them out of their bubble.
- It only takes a seed to begin the process of bringing someone out of the misinformation bubble.
- Turn off replies / comments if you have to.
Use these strategies for when you engage with misinformation:
- Do not attack the person.
- Politely ensure the person has read the fact check or source.
- Ensure that their counterargument has a specific claim they are disputing, and a non-partisan source.
- Do not argue forever - if the person just refuses to agree on reality - or won’t accept anything except biased media sources - move on.
Stick around on certain social media sites (or joining new ones).
- Especially on platforms where you are more likely to see misinformation.
- Any factual arguments you can get in front of anyone - is useful.
Support independent media.
Encourage those who are consumed with misinformation, to get another perspective.
Be fearless.

Some great resources you can use to post and form your arguments:

If we all do even some of these things, we will start to pop the misinformation bubble with logic and facts.

A Founding Father Quote a Day - Week 3

2025-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

This is the third recap of my new mini project, where I post a quote by a Founding Father each day to this Bluesky account.

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty.”

- Patrick Henry

”These are the times that try men’s souls.”

- Thomas Paine

”.... the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them”

- Thomas Jefferson

”Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

- Thomas Paine

“Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.“

- James Madison

“There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty“

- John Adams

”Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”

- Thomas Paine

“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.“

- John Adams

”When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, a hundred”

- Thomas Jefferson

“… guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism“

- George Washington

Fortune a Day - Recap - Week 6

2025-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s my week 6 recap of my Fortune A Day project!

To stay on top of these daily, follow Fortune a Day on Bluesky!

Thank You For 50k, Bluesky

2025-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

Thank you everyone on Bluesky for 50,000+ followers!

I did do one of these for 40k, but 50k is just a hugeeee milestone!

I’ve been really grateful to find such a great community here and so many that have been supportive of my content here on my website. Finding great people and getting suppor has been far easier here than any other social network I have ever been on.

If you haven’t already - definitely start an account on Bluesky. It’s growing a lot and a lot of great voices are on there. The more folks on it, versus billionaire owned networks - the better off we will be.

Check out my collection of great starter packs that I have put together, if you are interested!

Bluesky Starter Packs

The Future: Made In China, Part 2 - AI

2025-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

See part 1 - which focuses on energy generation here: The Future: Made In China

Last week, a massive AI breakthrough came out of China that threw the stock market into a large downturn.

A Chinese AI startup, named DeepSeek - released an AI model that has comparable performance and sophistication as the state of the art American models.

What really caught the market and tech companies by surprise is that the amount of money they needed to create this was a fraction of the cost that the American companies needed to make theirs. While this seems hard to believe, it seems reasonable - especially considering the fact that older GPUs are all they have available to them due to export laws and the like.

The less money spent on GPUs and energy, the less revenue those companies earn; which is primarily why we saw the market hit hard. Of course, the stock market is the least important part of the story.

Being that a Chinese company essentially caught up to us with old GPUs - we must take this AI race more seriously. It’s the final battle - the last technology race that will happen. Whoever becomes the first to create scalable Artificial Super Intelligence (and has the energy to run it), will have the ability to control everything and everyone else forever.

I spoke about these points over and over in Part 5 of my Nationalize AI series - Nationalize AI - Part 5 - Superiority. I won’t go into more of the points I cover there, but definitely check it out as I think it is the best part of the series.

This is not the only major news that came out from China, as a Chinese satellite beat Startlink by 10x in terms of space-to-ground communication speed - at 100 Gbps. Incredible. While this substantially beats Starlink - it does not outperform NASA’s TBIRD system which hit 200 Gbps in 2023.

This will have massive benefits for China, they are catching up in many technologies.

It is critical that the USA triple down on these technologies with investment and moonshot initiatives, so we can continue to stay competitive and hopefully increase the speed of innovation.

Movies That Make You Think - Part 3

2025-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

Part 1

Part 2

You’re viewing Part 3

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Just like part 1 & 2 - these are all movies I have watched, that can really make you think - about all kinds of things and how they relate to society and even politics/similar things. I highly recommend each of them.

Prisoners (Max)

Revolves around a former secret agent who offers his investigative services in order to atone for his past sins. Based on the TV series by the same name.

Equalizer (Amazon Prime Video)

Revolves around a former secret agent who offers his investigative services in order to atone for his past sins. Based on the TV series by the same name.

Enemy (Amazon Prime Video)

Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal) discovers his exact double and decides to track him down. Their lives become bizarrely and hauntingly intertwined. In the end, only one of them can survive. Go behind the scenes with Jake and Denis as they discuss the making of the film.

Adventureland (Paramount+)

From the director of SUPERBAD comes a coming-of-age comedy of big dreams, hysterical consequences, and young love, set in a run-down amusement park.

See all movie lists →

Tariffs Part 3: Foreign Relations, Reactions, and Retaliations

2025-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

This is Part 3 of a multiple part series.

Tariffs Part 1: An Introduction
Tariffs Part 2: An Impossible Balance
Tariffs Part 3: Foreign Relations, Reactions, and Retaliations

In Part 2, I mentioned that I had a few points left over from Part 1 but I only covered one in Part 2. Here I will address another major set of thoughts with regard to tariffs and especially widespread application thereof.

Retaliation

With the imposition of tariffs against another nation, especially the broad application of them - comes the high probability of retaliation.

This retaliation comes in many forms, but taking Canada as just one example that has been public about the fact that they will retaliate if broad tariffs are imposed.

These are just some of the retaliatory measures Canada has openly discussed, which could significantly harm the U.S. and that is just one country.

When Canada applies retaliatory tariffs on us - that could affect almost half a trillion dollars in exports by US companies (exports from US to Canada were $427.7 billion in 2022 - Source). In total (imports and exports) - the U.S. and Canada do a total of about 1 trillion dollars in trade each year - this represents a large amount of goods that will instantly be more expensive for companies and consumers in both countries.

Trade wars hurt everyone, massively. While implementing broad scale tariffs on a nation or set of nations hurts people in your country — starting a trade war and getting retaliatory tariffs imposed on you makes this many times worse.

It is incredibly hard to estimate just how bad it will be with any concrete numbers - but what is clear is that imposing significant tariffs to multiple of our largest trading partners could cost our economy hundreds of thousands (or potentially 1 million+) jobs. Take a look at what the Tax Foundation thinks about estimating harm (they have numbers that estimate even before retaliation).

Buy what you need now, stock up on things.

Relations

Threatening a country with tariffs is hardly the way to ensure larger successes. You may be able to bully a few small things out of the other country - but the harm it does to trade, relations, and national security - is massive. If our neighbors and treaty partners can’t trust us on a trade agreement, what can they trust us with? Why not expand trade with China (or any of the BRICS countries) instead of the U.S.?

What happens when there is sensitive intelligence that could help the US protect itself? If that intelligence includes implicating a source or a spy operation - will that country be willing to share the details?

Bullying our allies with tariffs weakens the U.S. drastically—before even accounting for the devastating economic fallout of trade wars. These tactics specifically strengthen all of the nations who are competitors of ours in the world, in many ways. They are laughing and excited in Beijing.

A Founding Father Quote a Day - Week 2

2025-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

This is the second recap of my new mini project, where I post a quote by a Founding Father each day to this Bluesky account. All of these were posted recently - I had a small hiccup and this one is a bit bigger than normal!

“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly, to property.“

- Samuel Adams

“A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people...“

- James Madison

“Distrust naturally creates distrust, and by nothing is good will and kind conduct more speedily changed."

- John Jay

“Give me liberty, or give me death!”

- Patrick Henry

“Well done is better than well said.“

- Benjamin Franklin

“The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon.“

- George Washington

“Facts are stubborn things.“

- John Adams

"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty."

- James Madison

“Power must never be trusted without a check.“

- John Adams

“Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.“

- George Washington

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty.”

- Patrick Henry

Fortune a Day - Recap - Week 5

2025-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s my week 5 recap of my Fortune A Day project!

To stay on top of these daily, follow Fortune a Day on Bluesky!

The Liberty Pear Highlights (Nov '24 - Jan '25)

2025-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve been writing and posting for a little over 2 months now. I’d like to revisit a few of my favorites from this time!

I will make highlight posts like this every once in a while, maybe monthly to reduce the length of them.

• Nationalize AI Series

This is the series I spent the most time on - and a lot of it is extremely important especially with the recent news about how China is catching up in AI.

I wish this series did as well as my tariffs series, as it is much, much, much more important! Each part can be read independently, but it is best when you read all of it. It’s not terribly long!

• The Tariff Series

I wrote two parts regarding tariffs. I believe these are both critical to understanding what might happen if there are broad tariffs implemented.

I do think I will make a part 3 and potentially more parts to this soon-ish.

• The Future: Made In China

A massive fusion breakthrough shows again that they are in the lead in this critical innovation. What does the USA need to do? What other energy projects are China ahead on?

• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Quotes from one of the most consequential men in American history.

• The Extinction of the Nightingale

There’s a theme, so far, on this blog - focusing about lesser known and/or under appreciated aspects of history. One example of this is my other highlighted post about Building 7.

Another such, vastly under-appreciated, story - is this story.

• 2025 Economic Thoughts & Predictions

Economic outlook & predictions based on two major policy proposals by the current administration. An economic article more so than a political one. Critical information if you’d like to understand how policy could affect everyone’s lives.

• Lump Of Labor Fallacy

Does adding new workers to an economy reduce jobs for others? Nope! This is known as the Lump of Labor Fallacy - see the explanation here to understand.

Understanding this can help you understand what certain policies will do to the economy overall.

• What Are Externalities?

This post is meant to give you a basic understanding of what externalities are, some examples of them, and an introduction on why they matter and need correction. Here we are particularly focused on negative externalities - since these are both more common and from a policy perspective, far more important.

• Building 7

An lesser known story during 9/11.

• Paradox of Thrift, Fallacy of Composition, Austerity, and Second-Order Thinking

Explore second-order thinking through the lens of various economic counter intuitions.

• Then, Jesus Said…

What would Jesus think of some of these things?

AOC Joins Jon Stewart On His Weekly Podcast

2025-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

As I have mentioned before, I don’t expect everyone to love or even like Stewart or AOC (or anyone, frankly). I find these types of chats informative even if I don’t fully agree with it all. I took a lot from this one.

Fortune a Day - Recap - Week 4

2025-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s my week 4 recap of my Fortune A Day project!

To stay on top of these daily, follow Fortune a Day on Bluesky!

The Future: Made In China

2025-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

Another large fusion breakthrough rose in the EAST on Monday, January 20th - maintaining a steady-state high-confinement plasma operation for a world record breaking 1,066 seconds. Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) - which is also known as China’s “artificial sun” - achieved this feat; and by the way - the world record they beat was their own from 2023 of 403 seconds.

While we are quite a ways away from the promise of fusion energy - unlimited, clean energy - it is aggressively clear that China is ahead.

Energy and Growth

Graph showing the relationship between many countries’ GDP per person and their energy use per person, with some countries highlighted. While it’s not a direct causal relationship, it demonstrates that energy is a key necessity for economic growth.

Making the cost of energy effectively zero, and having it be clean, enables economic growth we can not even conceive of. Even as the innovations we are working on become more real - like superintelligent AI - they are likely going to always be constrained by energy.

Dominating Energy All Around

Like I mentioned before, usable fusion is still far away. But this isn’t stopping China from another massive energy innovation project which seems to be a large solar power plant in space. This is another massive project beyond the scale of anything the USA has done since the moon landing. This project is still in developmental phase - and execution matters more than talk — but America isn’t talkin’ or executin’.

As a third small point - China is currently building 27 nuclear power plants vs 0 (!!!!!!!!!!) in construction in the USA - and will generate more nuclear power than the USA by 2030 (5 years from now!!). (Source)

I won’t go into the other advantages China has in terms of energy innovation - I will leave that as an exercise for the reader to research.

The Fusion Fix?

I made a lot of the same points, that I will make here about fusion power, about AI in Nationalize AI - Part 5 - Superiority - but it seems like it makes little sense to have so many American firms competing to make fusion work by themselves.

Nationalization, and making the project a moonshot (think The Manhattan Project, the moon landing, etc) seems like the most appropriate move. Not only would this ensure that we could equitably distribute the benefit of fusion, but importantly the combined labor and resources. America has a proven ability to achieve groundbreaking results when it commits unified resources and effort.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

2025-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

Some of my favorite quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., including the one above:

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

“If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell.”

“I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits”.

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience and comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

“And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society…”

So much to learn, so much to utilize in these unprecedented times.

Great TV Shows

2025-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Great TV Shows - Part 1 See Part 2 Here See Part 3 Here See Part 4 Here See Part 5 Here See Part 6 Here

See also: Amazing Movies: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6 • Part 7 • Part 8 • Part 9 • Part 10 • Part 11 • Part 12 • Part 13 • Part 14 • Part 15

Some of my favorite TV shows. I am picking out the (amazing) selection on Apple TV+ for now. There’s so much quality on Apple TV+ and it is very underrated.

Mythic Quest

Meet the team behind the biggest multiplayer video game of all time. But in a workplace focused on building worlds, molding heroes, and creating legends, the most hard-fought battles don’t occur in the game-they happen in the office.

Presumed Innocent

A horrific murder upends the Chicago Prosecuting Attorney’s Office when one of its own is suspected of the crime-leaving the accused (Jake Gyllenhaal) fighting to keep his family together.

For All Mankind

Imagine a world where the global space race never ended. This thrilling “what if” take on history from Ronald D. Moore (Outlander, Battlestar Galactica) spotlights the high-stakes lives of NASA astronauts and their families.

Some lists of great movies that I’ve posted already:

Movies That Make You Think

Movies That Make You Think - Part 2

See all TV lists →

2025 Economic Thoughts & Predictions

2025-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

🍐 This is an economic and economic policy article - not an article on politics. All the predictions here are based on economic principles and math, not partisan politics or anything else.

Additionally, please read the full article (including the links / additional resources) to fully get a grasp on the impacts here and before any knee jerk reactions!

The main two policies I’d like to examine are these:

Large scale tariffs
Mass deportation

Tariffs

While I have written about tariffs before, in a multipart series (which I am not done with, by the way) - I will summarize my thoughts.

🍐 For a more detailed set of thoughts on the situation that these will present, read through these (especially the second one):

Of course, we have no clue if Trump will even attempt to actually do these tariffs he is threatening. We do know American companies and consumers are already preparing for the negative effects of them:

As we enter into this next presidential term - unemployment stands at a very good 4.1%. Inflation is cooling overall, although trending upwards since The Federal Reserve has begun cutting interest rates.

As we know, American importers (and therefore, American consumers at the end of the day) pay tariffs on goods from other countries (and not other countries or their governments), and so any broad set of tariffs will cause a large upwards pressure on inflation.

This won’t only affect foreign goods, any significant tariffs will cause even goods made here more expensive, as over half of the things the United States imports are components of things we make here (intermediary good). Making our own supply chains less efficient will cause upwards price pressure in every single good regardless of where it is from.

Of course, with increased prices - comes reduced demand. The aggregate demand in an economy is a primary north star metric. As demand weakens, it is very possible to fall into a recession; how likely a recession is and how deep it is depends really how rough the tariffs are. Expect job losses if we add tariffs to imports at the levels that have been talked about.

Some additional points:

There may be some shift of demands to American goods (although typically this effect is limited/non-existent)
- The overall price of the American good is not going to be less than the foreign good was. If we could make the good for less and more efficiently, the market likely would already have been doing that.
- Unless we increase our labor force, in order to reallocate labor to making these goods - they have to not be doing something else. We’d much rather labor creating computer chips, software, etc vs the lowest quality possible socks, for example.
What is particularly scary is the thought of increased inflation and rising unemployment, which large scale tariffs will almost certainly cause.
- This is the situation I predict in Tariffs Part 2: An Impossible Balance

Mass Deportation

There’s a lot with this topic that is not economics - morality especially, however I will not focus on these here and will primarily focus on the economic effects.

A primary economic argument for deporting people is that it will open up jobs. However, this is incorrect, and is a fallacy. The more new laborers that you add to an economy, the more total jobs the economy has in it.

This fallacy is called The Lump of Labor Fallacy. You can read more about it and how jobs are actually created and destroyed there.

In reality, the more laborers you take out of the economy - the less work there is for others.

Additional points:

Do mass deportations cause job losses for American citizens?
- Lots of good sources that are listed here that you should dig into
Deportations reduce tax revenue
- “Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022.” Source
Removing this labor increases prices
- Creating a labor shortage in the sectors primarily affected will raise prices and hamper production.

Ideally, I’d like to include details about a possible tax bill, however there’s just no detail on what it would actually be.

If it’s just another bill to cut taxes on the rich, that will increase the budget deficit even further. A profoundly bad idea if implemented but again we just have no idea.

Similarly, the new not-actually-a-real-department to reduce government spending - DOGE - will likely not have much success. It is going to be a large lift to get essentially any significant spending cuts through Congress, so I won’t even discuss the likely significant negative effects of cutting government spending at the moment. Musk has already reduced his estimate for what is likely to actually be cut — I’d look for that number to be cut to essentially 0.

By the way, there is already a department that does this function (GAO), a new duplicated “department” seems like the very government waste they claim to care about.

Overall

We are looking for a very rough year if these things are even half implemented — something, by the way, Elon Musk has already said: Elon Musk Warns Of ‘Hardship’ For Americans If Trump Puts Him In Charge Of Cutting $33 Trillion Debt.

I feel confident that this year, unless something else major counteracts these policies (again, if implemented):

Unemployment is likely going to tick up over 5% (from 4.1% now).
Inflation is going to grow substantially.
Growth slows or the economy contracts.

This combination is called stagflation and, again, I covered it in my article Tariffs Part 2: An Impossible Balance. I believe The Federal Reserve may be forced to raise interest rates - depending how much inflation these policies cause - being forced to throw us further into a recession - either in late 2025 or early 2026.

Of course, no matter how disastrous these policies prove to be - it is likely the President will blame Biden.

Alternatively, the new administration could simply not implement these policies and not purposefully throw the economy into recession

I’d like to talk about some other things I see happening this year, such as effects of AI on the economy, so I may make a part 2 followup at some point soon.

I’ll be following up on these thoughts & predictions periodically, right or wrong, with more analysis as things happen.

Fortune a Day - Recap - Week 3

2025-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s my week 3 recap of my Fortune A Day project!

To stay on top of these daily, follow Fortune a Day on Bluesky!

Join The Mailing List

2025-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

Take a second to join my mailing list if you’d like. It really helps! Each post that I do I send to the mailing list with a link, and I won’t be sending any spam or anything like that, of course!

Join The Mailing List

Lump Of Labor Fallacy

2025-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

While it is not a prerequisite - information from the following article will be useful to more fully grasp the concepts here: Paradox of Thrift, Fallacy of Composition, Austerity, and Second-Order Thinking

Note: As always, economies are hard to 100% accurately predict when including every possible disaster or wild situation. Here we will focus on one variable, in isolation, that has an effect on employment, but its a massive one. This outlines the pattern and relationship in the majority of cases. There is always nuance, especially in the short term, especially in times of recession or depression.

Where do jobs come from?

Job growth primarily stems from an increase in demand for goods and services, although factors like innovation and investment also contribute.

When considering the impact of someone new entering the workforce who was previously not working, demand becomes the key variable to examine, as innovation and investment are less directly relevant in this context.

How does demand increase jobs?

Job growth is driven by rising demand, as businesses respond by hiring more workers to meet the needs of consumers. This creates a ripple effect, generating additional jobs across various sectors—a phenomenon known as an economic multiplier.

Effect of adding additional labor

When thinking of a new participant entering the workforce, it can feel correct to assume that if this person gets a job, someone else must miss out on a chance to secure employment.

However, this assumption relies on the flawed idea that the number of jobs in the economy is fixed - a notion known as the lump of labor fallacy. In reality, adding new workers to the economy inevitably increases the overall need for workers, as their employment drives further demand and job creation.

How could this possibly be?

Through a few primary mechanisms:

Laborers spend their earnings
- Once someone is employed for the first time in an economy, they have significantly more money to spend. This increases demand in many sectors such as food, housing, transportation, etc.
- Local economies typically benefit from this increased demand, as much of the spending stays local - restaurants, bars, shops, utilities, etc.
Economic multiplier
- This spending does not stop with its initial use. Each time money changes hands, it fuels new demand, creating jobs in that sector. This cycle amplifies with each repetition, creating a cascading effect that multiplies its impact across the economy.
Indirect productivity gains
- A new laborer can allow a business to expand its operations to serve more customers. When this happens, the business needs to purchase more supplies, increasing demand for those supplies — which, in turn, drives job creation in supply chains and related industries.
- Similarly, a specialized laborer entering a labor-constrained industry, such as healthcare, increases the capacity to serve more people. This expanded service availability leads to higher demand for medical supplies, equipment, and support services, further fueling job growth.
Longer term / higher level effects
- Increased employment leads to overall consumer confidence, spurring increased demand.
- Over time, their contributions may lead to investments in infrastructure, new technologies, or workforce training, all of which further increase demand.
  - For example, as new laborers contribute to business expansion in a specific area, the resulting economic growth may lead to road upgrades or improved traffic systems to accommodate the increased activity.

This is to say, the so-called economic pie is not one size with everyone trying to get a slice - the pie itself grows as more people go to grab a slice.

For a very simple example - imagine a young worker about to enter the workforce for the first time. This worker is 21 and has been living at home with no or very limited income to themselves their whole life so far. In this case, the worker is joining a construction crew - primarily helping to fix, lets say, pipes under the streets in NYC. The location itself does not matter, but I will include these details to give you a geographical reference point and to give it the sense of being more visually real.

This worker, upon accepting the new job, does a few things:

Moves to a new location closer to the job site
- The local community that this person moves to, now benefits from this workers spending due to their new income.
Buys new clothes for work
- Including specialized work boots.
Sets up their new place
- Purchases new or used dishes, furniture, TV, etc from local stores and/or online

While working, this worker:

Freed up the time of another worker who had been there longer and was more experienced
- This allows this other worker to focus on things that more experienced workers can
- The efficiency of the group increases, allowing the business to complete more jobs per year. In turn, they used the additional revenue to hire another person just like this worker in the upcoming year.
Consumption near the job site
- 2 days of the week, the crew gets lunch out together at a local spot near the job site.
- 1 day a week, the crew grabs drinks after work at a bar near the train station that folks take to go back home.

While off work, this worker:

Has income to spend
- Every weekend they go out with their friends and go out to the bar or clubs in the city.
- This person now can visit restaurants on their time off for dinners or lunch on the weekend.
- Can buy more and nicer things to improve their life.

Just from this one new entry into the labor force, in this one job, you can see clearly how demand is increasing in almost every sector, especially when you extrapolate each of the above points.

And so, it is not correct to assume that for one worker to win (get a job) others must miss out on employment. The economy does not have a fixed number of jobs; it is dynamic and increases when productivity and demand grow driven by these new laborers.

🍐 By the way, this can work in reverse — so if you take people out of the workforce it reduces demand and can kill jobs for other people.

Some other great articles that touch on The Lump of Labor Fallacy:

Thank You For 40k, Bluesky

2025-01-14T00:00:00+00:00

Thank you everyone on Bluesky for 40,000+ followers!

Check out my collection of great starter packs that I have put together, if you are interested!

Bluesky Starter Packs

What Are Externalities?

2025-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

While it is not a prerequisite - information from the following article will be useful to fully grasp the concepts here: Paradox of Thrift, Fallacy of Composition, Austerity, and Second-Order Thinking

When someone makes a purchase, or a trade - it seems to be clear, at first, what the costs are and who is getting what. Entity A gets X and Entity Y gets B. Simple enough, right?

Intuitively - it is clear to see these direct costs to each party:

The Seller

Cost of producing that good (including labor, materials, marketing, etc).

The Buyer

Cost is the money they spent to purchase the good or service.

Enter, externalities.

The above costs are the only ones taken into account in the private transaction - however there are other costs associated with the transaction - almost all of them are costs to society as a whole or other groups of individuals.

Examples

Some examples of negative externalities.

Alcohol sales

The cost of a beer, for example, is relatively straightforward. You pay some small amount of $ for a beer, and they give you the beer.

However, there are a few second order effects of selling and consumption of alcohol on society:
- Public Disorder
  - Bars can become rowdy, fights occur, public places become overly noisy, people commit more crime when drunk in general, etc.
  - Our tax money must be used to address these issues - such as police having to respond to a fight in a bar.
- Health Costs
  - There are many health implications of drinking alcohol that cost a lot to treat.
  - The more money spent on this, the higher insurance rates go for others. Additionally, the more effort spent on these issues - the less healthcare workers can solve other health issues or do research.
- Drunk Driving Accidents
  - Drunk driving kills, on average, 11,000 people a year (average of 2013 - 2022). This is one person every 39 minutes. (Source)
  - Not to mention, all of the costs for treatment of non-fatal crashes.
- Productivity Loss
  - The overall economy loses productivity because of alcohol for a few reasons:
    - Alcohol related deaths reduce the amount of people in the labor force who can produce goods and services, as do major injuries tied to alcohol.
    - Hangovers and missing work or reduced productivity at work, as well.
    - Excessive drinking, in 2010 (most recent data available) cost the economy around $249 billion dollars. (Source)
Traffic Congestion

Consider an area where the traffic is immense, during specific times or otherwise. Traffic jams are common in this situation, and people tend to be stuck in these jams.
- Productivity Loss
  - If people are late to work and miss some work - they are less productive by definition.
- Fuel Consumption Rises
  - Increasing pollution (not just climate change concerns, but burning fuel gives people diseases due to airborne pollutant)
    - These include high rates of lung cancer, asthma and respiratory issues, heart diseases, and neurological disorders. These take a huge toll on people and the economy.
  - There is more demand for fuel - and therefore gas prices rise.
- More Accidents
  - Stop and go traffic increases the rates of accidents especially rear end collisions.
  - Tax payers fund emergency services, insurance premiums rise, and the traffic jams worsen when there are accidents.
Social Media Applications

Social media companies design their platforms to maximize user engagement through notifications, algorithms, and addictive content loops. Billions of people spend large portions of their lives scrolling on social media - users get social media and the companies get money from ads and the user’s data.
- Mental Health Issues
  - Increased anxiety, depression, and social comparison. The costs of therapy, medication, and reduced productivity are borne by individuals, employers, and public healthcare systems.
  - Suicides due to social media are common.
- Spread of Misinformation
  - False or harmful information spreads rapidly, affecting public discourse and leading to societal costs like political polarization and public confusion.
  - Misinformation has caused many deaths, as well.
- Productivity Loss
  - Excessive screen time affects workplace performance, increasing indirect costs for businesses and government.

You can see, there are a lot of very very bad second order effects to lots of types of commerce. Some of these have some taxation attached to help offset the societal issues they cause - but often it’s too low - and most of these have nothing to offset them at all.

There are so many examples of negative externalities, but I won’t go on and on.

Why Is This Important?

In many, many cases - corporations make enormous profits while the individuals in society pay the costs in both direct and indirect ways - externalities. All of us are paying extraordinarily, while millionaires and billionaires laugh at us on their pile of cash.

Is this theft?

Duh!

There's a Storm Coming...

2025-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

From The Dark Knight Rises:

Selina Kyle (Catwoman): There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.

Bruce Wayne: You sound like you’re looking forward to it.

Selina Kyle: I’m adaptable.

A Founding Father Quote a Day - Week 1

2025-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

This is the first recap of my new mini project, where I post a quote by a Founding Father each day to this Bluesky account. All of these were posted this week!

"‘Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country."

- Thomas Paine

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

- Thomas Jefferson

"Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light."

- George Washington

"Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom."

- Thomas Jefferson

" ...it is better to offer no excuse than a bad one."

- George Washington

Movies That Make You Think - Part 2

2025-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

Part 1

You’re viewing Part 2

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Just like part 1 - these are all movies I have watched recently, that really make you think - about all kinds of things and how they relate to society and even politics/similar things. I highly recommend each of them!

The Marsh King’s Daughter (Hulu)

In this tense thriller, a woman (Daisy Ridley) returns to the wilds of her youth to face her father (Ben Mendelsohn), the man who kept her and her mother captive for years.

Deep Water (Hulu)

A psychological thriller that takes us inside the marriage of picture-perfect Vic (Ben Affleck) and Melinda (Ana de Armas) Van Allen to discover the dangerous mind games they play and what happens to the people that get caught up in them.

Flight (Paramount Plus)

Airline pilot Whip Whitaker miraculously lands his plane after a mid-air catastrophe but questions arise as to who or what was really at fault.

V for Vendetta (Amazon - Rent)

A terrorist freedom fighter known only as “V” begins a violent guerilla campaign to destroy those who’ve succumbed to totalitarianism, and recruits a young woman he’s rescued from the secret police to join him.

See all movie lists →

The Extinction of the Nightingale

2025-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

There’s a theme, so far, on this blog - focusing about lesser known and/or underappreciated aspects of history. One example of this is my post about Building 7.

Another such, vastly underappreciated, story - is that of the Swedish Nightingale - Jenny Lind.

Europe

Lind, a prolific opera singer, was born in Sweden in 1820 and started singing at the age of 10. After spending time singing and touring in Sweden and Denmark; during the 1840’s she traveled to Germany and Britain, gaining large popularity throughout Europe for her amazing performances and stunning voice.

America

In 1849, P.T. Barnum approached Lind and proposed a large American tour. The tour would be 150 concerts over 18 months throughout the United States. While she did not finish the tour under Barnum’s management, we know that she made at least $350,000 (approx. $11 million in 2024 dollars) for the 93 concerts she did with Barnum and likely a similar rate for the remaining events.

Cash

Considering the above figure for just 93 of the concerts - and assuming she netted about the same from the rest (although it’s likely to be more since it was under her management) - it would have been about $564,000 (about $18.5 million in 2024 dollars).

Considering this amount from just the American tour - it’s likely that she made at the very least 1.5 million (about $50 million in 2024 dollars) in all. This made her, solidly, a multi-millionaire - exceptionally rich, especially for the time.

Unique

One of the unique characteristics of Lind was her incredible donations to charity throughout her life. While always donating heavily to charity, she donated all of the proceeds from her large American tour. Of her contributions to charity - her largest was funding free schooling in Sweden - many schools being established with the funds from this tour. It’s important to remember that free schooling was exceptionally rare in this time.

In addition, she donated across Europe and America to help people with less means get access to music, healthcare, schooling; and to various religious institutions.

Extinct

These contributions put Lind on a list of ~9 or so exceedingly wealthy individuals that actually donated at least 50% of their wealth during their time alive, in history — extremely unselfish versus the rest of the elites. By the way, she was also the first person to do so - from what I can find after searching.

The last person who has donated 50%+ of their wealth and has been worth at least as much as Lind - was born in 1945. The amount of people worth that much since 1945 has grown and the rate of growth is increasing.

Are these great works - for others and forgoing self, in which Jenny Lind demonstrated, something of the past — extinct?

Fortune a Day - Recap - Week 2

2025-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s my week 2 recap of my Fortune A Day project!

To stay on top of these daily, follow Fortune a Day on Bluesky!

Thoughts?

2025-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

Before I get into it today - I want to point out that not everyone is going to agree with me here. In our movement, we all can have different perspectives and (must!) still work together and respect each other!

Today was Jimmy Carter’s funeral, and all the former presidents that are alive were there.

From the campaign trail, Obama had some absolutely scathing warnings for people (including specifically calling out black men) about the 45th President’s (at the time) potential return to office. Warnings and thoughts about 45, by the way, that I find to be true.

Cut to today - I was extremely shocked to see that they were laughing and chatting together for a while. See:

I don’t necessarily know what I would have expected, although it is interesting that others did not even acknowledge Trump.

There’s not one way of handling things, and no one way of politicking - although based on the extremely dire warnings Obama gave, this makes me think he didn’t believe those things fully - or something?

If he believed those things he said about Trump, why would he be laughing and chatting like old friends? I do think my immediate reaction would have been different if he hadn’t be so adamant about the existential threat, etc that Trump was, on the campaign trail. It isn’t like he has to work with him, Obama is not in Congress or government at all.

I am trying to continue to process this, but I am really not feeling great about it at the moment; but I will hold off a fully formed opinion until I give myself extra time on it.

What are your thoughts? Reach out to me on Bluesky to engage with me (politely!) about your thoughts.

Collection of Bluesky Starter Packs

2025-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

Looking to grow your network on Bluesky? Check out these starter packs.

I’ll keep this list updated as I create new ones, and as I find ones created by others that I would like to share!

If you are in the mobile Bluesky app right now, the links will work but will not dismiss this screen correctly. I recommend opening this up in your phone’s browser (Safari or Chrome) and closing this screen, first.

Created by me:

Democrats, resisters, left leaning, politics (12)

Democrats, resisters, left leaning, politics (11)

Democrats, resisters, left leaning, politics (10)

Democrats, resisters, left leaning, politics (9)

Democrats, resisters, left leaning, politics (8)

Democrats, resisters, left leaning, politics (7)

Democrats, resisters, left leaning, politics (6)

Democrats, resisters, left leaning, politics (5)

Democrats, resisters, left leaning, politics (4)

Democrats, resisters, left leaning, politics (3)

Democrats, resisters, left leaning, politics (2)

Democrats, resisters, left leaning, politics

Core follows - good media and friendly accounts

Created by others:

🦋Steph’s Starter Pack, Volume V🦋 (created by @wordswithsteph)

Sunday Reset Pack (by @ellilanderson)

New Mini-Project - A Quote A Day From The Founding Fathers

2025-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

I am starting another mini-project. Similar to my last project, actually.

I am posting one quote from a Founding Father every day on this Bluesky account. Please check it out and follow if you want!

I am thinking about doing a recap on here every week just like I do for the fortunes, but we will see.

A Dragon Lives Forever, But Not So Gentle Legends

2025-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

Today, January 7th, 2025, Peter Yarrow passed away.

Peter had an amazing life, including being the “Peter” in Peter, Paul, and Mary - the folk music group.

As a group and individually, Peter, Paul, and Mary participated in numerous social activism efforts, including marching with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma.

Additionally, and more personally, they wrote one of my favorite songs; Puff, the Magic Dragon.

If you haven’t heard the song, take a few minutes to listen:

Every time, and I mean every single time I hear this song it makes me cry - sometimes even just the thought of it tears me up. No other song or piece of media has this effect on me at all.

The topic of the song always gets to me, and it also reminds me of my childhood as my dad would always sing this song to me. Growing up is hard and reflecting on it is emotional; friends who are no longer friends, “good old times” disappearing seemingly overnight, toys and stuffed animals lost to time…

Movies That Make You Think

2025-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

You’re viewing Part 1

Also see, Great TV Shows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

These are all movies I have watched recently, from Netflix, that really make you think - about all kinds of things and how they relate to society and even politics/similar things. I highly recommend each of them!

The Discovery

A scientist whose proof of an afterlife caused a rash of suicides forges ahead with his research, while his disapproving son falls for a troubled woman.

I Care A Lot

In this darkly comedic thriller, a scammer exploiting the legal system to defraud older adults targets a woman with dangerous connections.

Anon

In a future where technology has rendered privacy obsolete, a detective investigates a serial assassin who has been deleted from all visual records.

In The Shadow Of The Moon

A Philadelphia detective slowly unravels as he nurses a lifelong obsession with an enigmatic female serial killer whose crimes defy explanation.

See all movie lists →

Fortune a Day - Recap - Week 1

2025-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s my week 1 recap of my Fortune A Day project. I missed a few for New Years, but we have a great collection so far!

To stay on top of these daily, follow Fortune a Day on Bluesky

Making My Pasta Sauce

2025-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

I recently made my marinara meat sauce. In this post I’ll share the recipe for fun.

I will say a few things first:

This is not meant to be traditional in any way, shape or form! If that is what you like, this is not gonna work for you!
I love onions. I use more onions than probably any recipe online. You can reduce the amount to your taste if you wish of course.

Ingredients

1 - Pound of ground beef (can change out for other ground meat you prefer)
2 - Cans of crushed tomato (can use whole peeled tomatoes and manually crush)
3 - Large yellow onion
2 - Cups of red wine
4 - Extra generous tablespoons of minced garlic
1 - Teaspoon of oregano (sometimes I use “Italian seasoning”)
3 - Tablespoons of salt
3 - Tablespoons of pepper
5 - Tablespoons of olive oil
1 - Tablespoon of crushed red pepper

The process

First thing I always do is chop up my onions:

I like them a bit larger than normal - here they all are all chopped up:

My second step is opening up the 2 cans of crushed tomatoes. This time, I don’t have the absolute best brands — however these will do:

And then pour them into the pan, with 3 tablespoon of olive oil:

At this point, turn on the stove top at the lowest setting, and throw in the 1 cup of red wine:

Next, add in about:

2/3rds of the chopped onion
1 tablespoon of crushed red pepper
2 tablespoons of salt
2 tablespoons of pepper
2 generous tablespoons of the minced garlic
1 teaspoon of oregano

and then stir the sauce.

Keep that burner on and now move onto the ground beef.

Put your ground beef in a frying pan
Add in the rest of your:
- Salt
- Pepper
- Olive oil
- Onions
- Minced garlic
- Red wine

Break up the beef and cook until the meat is cooked.

Drain the contents using a strainer and put it into the sauce…

and then stir the meat into the sauce:

I usually leave this cooking, stirring occasionally, for at least another hour after this but it can keep cooking for a while.

This type of meat sauce, in my opinion, goes the best with spaghetti. Normal or thick spaghetti, by the way, not angel hair or thin spaghetti.

Here is the final spaghetti in a bowl with some cheese.

Building 7

2024-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

September 11th, 2001

9:37 AM

Planes have been flown into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center, as well as the Pentagon.

10:03 AM

United Airlines Flight 93 plunged into a field, igniting the isolated rural area near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Six minutes earlier, onboard - after voting to do so - the passengers revolted - ultimately preventing the hijackers from crashing the plane into the U.S. Capitol Building.

The crash site for United Airlines 93 and the resting site of the heroes who sacrificed themselves to prevent further disaster (Source)

Relatively, the story of United Airlines 93 is not well known. Especially when compared to the Twin Towers and the Pentagon attacks - among other details of that day.

There’s many stories about these attacks that are not well known enough. Many about about people, heroes, buildings, etc. Some of these stories extend into the present day.

10:28 AM

The North Tower of the World Trade Center collapses, adding to the moments from the live TV broadcasts that many Americans will never forget.

The debris from the North Tower collapse damaged and ignited fires inside of a third tower – Building 7 (7 World Trade Center), on multiple lower floors. The building’s fire suppression system was unable to fight the fire, which burned throughout the day.

For some background - this third tower, Building 7, was completed in March of 1987, was 47 stories tall, and had a unique trapezoidal shape.

Layout of the various buildings, including the Twin Towers and Building 7 in downtown Manhattan (Source)

5:20 PM

Building 7 begins it’s collapse, 7 hours and 21 minutes after the South Tower and 6 hours and 52 after the North Tower. The third tower has collapsed. Thankfully, no lives were lost due to Building 7’s collapse.

Unfortunately, this is a much lesser known event that occurred on that day.

A beautiful tower, part of the illustrious history of the greatest city in the world, lost that day - but never lost from our memories.

Building 7 in August 1992, taken from the WTC observation deck (Source)

South view of Building 7 in 1994 (Source)

Paradox of Thrift, Fallacy of Composition, Austerity, and Second-Order Thinking

2024-12-29T00:00:00+00:00

What is the Paradox of Thrift

The Paradox of Thrift refers to the counterintuitive concept that, in many circumstances, when individuals save more money, it leads to a decrease in total savings across an economy.

As individuals choose to save more money, aggregate demand decreases. In a recessionary economy, this deepens the downturn, causing job losses and forcing people to deplete their savings or preventing them from growing their savings. Ultimately, total savings decline — enter the paradox: saving more to save less.

Side Note · Austerity

This is similar as to why reducing government spending (austerity) during recessions - amplifies the recession. It may seem like a counter notion, but an increase of government spending during recessionary periods is key to prevent larger issues and get an economy out of recession.

As for this reduction of government spending (austerity) and it’s correlation to hurting a country in recession; we have a great real world case study - The Great Recession. Not only did reduction in government spending prevent recovery of the recession in many nations that employed this tactic, it also had other negative effects. See this article for that analysis: Austerity in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

Additionally, and notably, extremely negative consequences were evident because of the reduction of government spending during The Great Depression: Fiscal austerity and the rise of the Nazis

Paradox of Thrift · Fallacy of Composition

The Paradox of Thrift is a notable example of the Fallacy of Composition.

The Fallacy of Composition is when one assumes something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole. This fallacy has relations to other fallacies, but I won’t get into those here - but it is pretty interesting stuff if you are interested definitely look it up.

A very apt example that is an analogous to the Paradox of Thrift and another great example of the Fallacy of Composition, goes as follows:

If one stands up from their seat during a soccer game, they can see better. Therefore if everyone stands up, they can all see better!

Second-Order Thinking

This idea of the Paradox of Thrift and the Fallacy of Composition naturally leads to the concept of second-order thinking, which challenges us to move beyond immediate, surface-level conclusions and consider the broader, often counterintuitive, consequences of actions.

To examine second-order thinking, we will use the examples from earlier to walk through the naive first-order thoughts and then the second-order thoughts. Each of these examples are simplest versions of the examples, but

First-order thinking: Saving is good no matter what because it builds wealth. Second order thinking: Excessive saving during a recession reduces demand, leading to job losses and lower overall savings.

First-order thinking: Cutting government spending reduces deficits. Second order thinking: Reduced spending shrinks the economy, lowering tax revenue and increasing the debt-to-GDP ratio.

Conclusion

Especially with regards to economics, many policies and policy proposals require second-order thinking to determine whether it is a net positive or net negative.

Second-order thinking is important not just for deciding your view on policies but for everyday decisions, especially when confronted with something that sounds true or feels true. Our instinct is often to focus on the immediate, surface-level effects of a choice, which can lead to oversimplified conclusions. Second-order thinking reveals the hidden complexities behind what initially seems obvious and can lead to the exact opposite conclusion.

This deeper thinking requires us to ask questions like, “What happens next?” or “What are the broader implications?” It is not enough to stop at the first level of understanding, because the most important effects are often indirect or delayed. Second-order thinking forces us to go beyond immediate outcomes and consider how a choice might ripple through time and across various contexts. By analyzing the chain of consequences and exploring potential unintended outcomes, we can avoid shortsighted decisions and ensure our reasoning holds up under deeper scrutiny.

New Mini-Project - A Fortune A Day

2024-12-28T00:00:00+00:00

I decided to start a new mini-project called “A Fortune A Day”. Each day I am going to consume a fortune cookie and then post the fortune on a new Bluesky page.

As for how it relates to this site, I will be doing a recap every week or month of either all of them or the best ones. It depends on how easy it is to keep up.

See the first fortune, on Bluesky here:

This week, let go of what no longer serves you.

[image or embed]
— A Fortune A Day (@fortuneaday.bsky.social) December 27, 2024 at 3:07 PM

Ocean Casino Resort

2024-12-27T00:00:00+00:00

A bit of a different type of post, today, but it should be interesting - especially for those of you in on the eastern seaboard.

I have been frequenting Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City for a while now, with friends, and this year for vacation I decided to do vacation with my wife there.

I want to write about it because I don’t think it gets enough credit for how awesome it is, even relative to other AC and Vegas resorts. I’ll also include some tips throughout the article here, you won’t wanna miss them - they’re good.

Casino

First off, the casino floor is awesome. I spent a decent amount of time here. While they do allow smoking, it is less smokey than other casinos I have been too (especially less than ones on cruise ships).

Tips

These two tips involve balancing gambling and getting free drinks on the floor for a long time. So if that isn’t your thing, don’t pay much attention.

Stay away from the slots. These have really bad odds and you will be out of money the quickest.
There are two roulette machines (and tons of tables with people running them). I like both, but the one machine, by the walkway near the middle and the sports book, is my favorite machine.
- You can bet a minimum $3/spin, but you can also bet $1/spin for a chance on the “jackpot chance”.
- Sometimes the jackpot chance is one number sometimes two. I hit this a decent amount which typically pays a 15-30 dollar bonus - but can hit a lot more in the small/medium/large jackpot (or whatever it’s called). I hit the small jackpot once, which was 70 dollars.
- On the floor, you can grab a decent amount of free drinks - maybe ~1 an hour. Playing a low risk roulette play with your minimum $3 bet and then the $1 jackpot chance can keep you playing all weekend for hours a day and getting free drinks.
The absolute best way to get free drinks and lose the least amount of money is the video poker on the bar (specifically the sports book bar in the center).
- The bartenders are obviously way more attentive than the servers on the floors as they have less people to attend to and don’t have to walk across the floor and back over and over.
- I usually play Jacks or Better and can stay there for many hours with a lot of free drinks and lose less money than the drinks are worth. It’s amazing.

Pool

My wife spent a lot of time at the heated pool. It has an indoor and outside part - she gave it amazing reviews. It is also free if you’re staying there.

Food

Everywhere we ate was amazing. They have multiple casual and fine dining options. We had meals at most of the places here, but our favorite was our large fine dining meal at Ocean Steak:

We ordered the wagyu meatballs as the appetizer, porterhouse for two, & a loaded baked potato.

Everything was amazing (including the free bread they give, its wild). One hilarious point was that the baked potato was by far the largest potato I have ever seen:

Zhen Bang

A casual dining experience that is great and we enjoyed a bunch is Zhen Bang.

The fried rice there is amazing and is a hugeeee portion. Perfection!

Spa

While I did not go to the spa, my wife said it was awesome. She got the day pass and had a great time.

Other

There’s a lot of miscellaneous stuff that is great about Ocean. Specifically, it being right on the ocean is awesome. Obviously, during the winter it’s too cold for the ocean - but the views are amazing.

Also, during the summer when I went - me and my friends rented a cabana at another pool and it was a great experience - and splitting it between a few friends made it not horrifically expensive.

A great experience that we both loved. Highly recommend!

Nationalize AI - Part 6 - Conclusion

2024-12-11T00:00:00+00:00

This is Part 6 in a multipart series on nationalizing AI:

Nationalize AI - Part 1 - Defining The Problem
Nationalize AI - Part 2 - Labor
Nationalize AI - Part 3 - Corporate Power
Nationalize AI - Part 4 - Inefficient
Nationalize AI - Part 5 - Superiority
Nationalize AI - Part 6 - Conclusion

Conclusion

As I mentioned in the first part - we are facing a fork in the road. We can either maintain the status quo and let AI be privately owned, or nationalize it.

If we follow the nationalization plan I outlined in Part 1, as well - with oversight and shared ownership and direct distribution of the profits and benefits to the public; we can offset unemployment issues, not suffer the massive problems with having a corporation owning AI, and can efficiently move AI forward for our own national and societal interest.

On the other hand, allowing private corporations to maintain sole control of the most powerful technology ever created will result in unparalleled suffering and pose an existential threat to humanity.

It is imperative we nationalize AI as soon as possible.

Nationalize AI - Part 5 - Superiority

2024-12-10T00:00:00+00:00

This is Part 5 in a multipart series on nationalizing AI:

Nationalize AI - Part 1 - Defining The Problem
Nationalize AI - Part 2 - Labor
Nationalize AI - Part 3 - Corporate Power
Nationalize AI - Part 4 - Inefficient
Nationalize AI - Part 5 - Superiority
Nationalize AI - Part 6 - Conclusion

Superiority

Throughout history, moments of intense competition have driven humanity to achieve extraordinary feats, often under the shadow of immense pressure and high stakes. These races—whether against time, an adversary, or nature itself (often all three)—are marked by innovation, sacrifice, and moral complexity.

They reveal the lengths to which nations and individuals will go to gain an advantage or secure survival, even when the cost is extraordinary. Here are three such defining moments that changed the course of history.

The Space Race

On October 4, 1957, a crisp autumn evening, the Soviet Union sent shockwaves through the world, and through history, by launching Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. As its beeping signal echoed from orbit, the Space Race was born, a battle between superpowers to dominate the cosmos.

Four years later, in 1961, the Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin became the first human to leave Earth’s bounds, orbiting the planet aboard Vostok 1. His journey, lasting just 108 minutes, was a triumph for the Soviet Union and a humbling reminder to the United States of the stakes in this cosmic competition.

In 1962, President Kennedy inspired a nation and the world with his bold challenge: “We choose to go to the Moon.” This visionary declaration transformed the Space Race into a daring quest to push the boundaries of human achievement.

The race culminated on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 successfully landed on the Moon. As Neil Armstrong descended the ladder and declared, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” the moment symbolized more than an American victory—it was a triumph for humanity.

The Space Race forever changed our understanding of exploration, turning the impossible into a reality and setting the stage for future journeys into the unknown.

Oppenheimer

On July 16, 1945, in the remote arid deserts of New Mexico, the world changed forever. Under the guidance of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project successfully detonated the first atomic bomb in the Trinity test. As the fiery blast lit up the sky, Oppenheimer reflected on a line from Hindu scripture: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

A theoretical physicist with a keen intellect, Oppenheimer led a team of brilliant scientists in a race against time during World War II. Their mission: to harness the atom’s power before Nazi Germany could. The result was a weapon of unimaginable destruction, marking both a triumph of human ingenuity and the dawn of a terrifying new era.

When atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending the war, Oppenheimer became a symbol of scientific achievement—and its moral complexity.

Enigma

During World War II, the Allies faced a deadly challenge: Nazi Germany’s Enigma machine, a cipher believed to be unbreakable. Decoding it would mean turning the tide of war, but the clock was ticking.

In 1940, Alan Turing and his team at Bletchley Park rose to the task. Through ingenuity and relentless effort, they built a revolutionary machine that unraveled Enigma’s secrets. Their success delivered critical intelligence, saving countless lives and shortening the war.

The race to break Enigma was a triumph of brilliance and determination, fought in silence and secrecy. It stands as a testament to the unseen heroes who shaped the course of history.

The Race to End All Races

All of the aforementioned events were born from intense rivalry, propelled by urgency, and achieved through groundbreaking innovation. They highlight humanity’s capacity to push boundaries under pressure, often at great cost, leaving legacies that reshaped the course of history. Notably, these were not privately run or owned efforts—they were fully centralized, publicly funded, and operated under governmental control to ensure their scope and impact could be effectively managed.

The AI superiority race is larger than all three of these, combined, times a trillion. This is it.

Whichever entity controls artificial superintelligence—assuming it could be controlled at all (a topic for another time 🫡)—will hold unprecedented power. This control would translate into immediate dominance in military strategy, economic systems, political influence, and societal organization.

Additionally, and critically, whoever achieves this feat first, can immediately lock out every other entity in the world from achieving it as well.

Such an entity would dictate the direction of humanity, able to directly and quickly reshape every aspect of life on Earth for all living beings.

This is the last race; there will be no others. Superintelligent AI will be humanity’s final innovation, and its control will determine our survival.

It being so critical to be first to achieve superintelligent AI, resource centralization is imperative. Notably, centralization was also a defining feature of the projects mentioned earlier. It’s obvious we are already investing a lot, federally, in AI already, but the vast majority of the talent and resources are currently in the private sector.

While no entity is perfect, the best choice is one accountable to the people through voting power.

I believe the case is clear - nationalization is necessary for the above reasons.

In the final post of mine, I will briefly recap my arguments and conclude this series on nationalizing AI: Nationalize AI - Part 6 - Conclusion

Nationalize AI - Part 4 - Inefficient

2024-12-09T00:00:00+00:00

This is Part 4 in a multipart series on nationalizing AI:

Nationalize AI - Part 1 - Defining The Problem
Nationalize AI - Part 2 - Labor
Nationalize AI - Part 3 - Corporate Power
Nationalize AI - Part 4 - Inefficient
Nationalize AI - Part 5 - Superiority
Nationalize AI - Part 6 - Conclusion

Inefficient

Overall, the details here on how AI systems work are hand-wavy and explicitly high-level. In reality, it’s a minor point, but worth keeping in mind as I make generalizations here.

Markets, generally, are an excellent mechanism for allocating resources and driving innovation through competition. However, in this article, I argue that the unique characteristics and risks of AI make it an exception where market forces fall short of ensuring efficiency, equity, and safety.

The Current Landscape & Its Inefficiencies

There are really not many companies competing in building these very large systems, and much of their effort is duplicated. The models primarily use the same or similar datasets, techniques, and algorithms.

While duplication of effort is common across industries, in AI, it poses unique challenges:

Resource Intensity

Developing state-of-the-art AI models requires enormous computational resources, energy, and capital. This duplication wastes resources that could be used elsewhere. Not only could these resources be used in novel AI development, but they could also benefit other industries—or their conservation could help maintain reasonable pricing for others.

Not only this, the amount of resources required for each firm with an AI system is going up and accelerating very fast. This is especially true of energy (and therefore money), tomorrow’s AI systems will require massive upgrades to energy generation and likely the grid infrastructure. This is to say, while the duplicated resources are already incredibly intense - it will only get vastly worse.

Limited Competition

The high cost of developing these systems creates significant barriers for smaller players, consolidating control among a few major corporations.

Additionally, with similar datasets and techniques, most AI systems do not offer substantially different capabilities, meaning the duplication does little to advance the field.

Missed Opportunities for Collaboration

Instead of pooling efforts to address broader societal challenges, companies compete to slightly outpace each other with similar technologies.

You can see the rat race by simply looking up the AI benchmarks leader boards. Each company essentially strives only for marginal percentage improvements over the others in these benchmarks, without attempting to solve real world issues.

Why Nationalization Solves For This

Due to the unprecedented nature of AI—especially the high costs of developing these systems—and the lackluster competition in the industry, I contend that the current state of AI development is clearly failing to optimize AI for the public good. This represents a misallocation of resources that requires some form of government intervention.

A clearly defined and transparent public AI program removes a significant amount of the unnecessary massive duplication of resources. It also ensures that the developments and research is pointed in directions that are more aligned with solving massive societal issues that AI can and therefore should be helping to fix.

I’ve made the following point on each of the articles in the series so far - because I believe it to be true on each, and this one is no different; I believe these issues alone demonstrate the necessity of nationalization.

In the next article in the series, we will talk about why it’s important to be the first to control super intelligent AI: Nationalize AI - Part 5 - Superiority

Nationalize AI - Part 3 - Corporate Power

2024-12-08T00:00:00+00:00

This is Part 3 in a multipart series on nationalizing AI:

Nationalize AI - Part 1 - Defining The Problem
Nationalize AI - Part 2 - Labor
Nationalize AI - Part 3 - Corporate Power
Nationalize AI - Part 4 - Inefficient
Nationalize AI - Part 5 - Superiority
Nationalize AI - Part 6 - Conclusion

Corporate Power

Current Consolidation

One of the largest current issues globally is the massive consolidation and increase of corporate power.

There’s a lot of reasons for this, but one of the main ones has been the increasing number of mergers:

(Number of acquisitions per year from 1985 - 2023)

Why is Corporate Power an Issue Already?

At a high level, it is pretty easy to understand the literal consolidation - regarding # of companies that control certain industries - as was just covered. The problem does not stop there, however. With more and more power, and less competition; corporations are not using their power to better society, they are using it irresponsibly to abuse people.

Let’s walk through general corporate abuse, big tech’s existing abuse, and the abuses of current AI technology.

General Corporate Abuse

Corporations do anything for a dollar. They do not care about anyone except their C-suite and the shareholders. Corporations and the rich are more than happy with harming you, killing you, bankrupting you, killing your job, stealing from you - just for their next buck. I do plan on writing about a specific part of this at some point in its own post - but let’s briefly go through these:

Turing Pharmaceuticals’ Price Hike
- In 2015, Turing Pharmaceuticals, led by CEO Martin Shkreli, increased the price of the life-saving drug Daraprim by 5,000%, making it unaffordable for many patients.
Tobacco companies
- Despite clear scientific evidence linking smoking to cancer and other diseases, tobacco companies publicly denied these risks, lying to everyone about the dangers of their products.
- Targeted Marketing: They aggressively marketed cigarettes to vulnerable populations, including children and adolescents, to cultivate lifelong customers, often using themes of glamour and rebellion to appeal to youth.
- “The tobacco industry continues to amplify misinformation in the media, including the recent egregious attacks on tobacco control organizations[1]. The tobacco industry is the only one that stands to benefit by undermining tobacco control organizations.” Source
- These actions, over decades (and they continue), are the definition of killing people for money. By the way, tobacco stocks pay some of the highest dividends to shareholders in the stock market.
Lead in Gasoline
- Many years ago, lead was added to gasoline despite the fact the companies knew that it was a known poison.
- For years, these corporations created fake studies, spent tens of millions on legal fights, created propaganda and marketing campaigns – so they could profit from costing a massive amount of harm. Source
- “A century of leaded gasoline has taken millions of lives and to this day leaves the soil in many cities from New Orleans to London toxic.” Source
- Long-Term Effects on Survivors: Millions of people exposed to lead during childhood suffer lasting impacts, including reduced IQ, diminished cognitive function, lower socioeconomic status compared to their parents, and an increased risk of mental health issues. These effects hinder their quality of life, career achievements, and overall well-being. Source 1 Source 2

These are not even the biggest examples, or all of them - obviously - here’s a short list of some of the other biggest instances: Purdue Pharma knowingly fueled the opioid crisis, BP caused the Deepwater Horizon spill by reducing safety measures, Nestlé exploited water resources, the asbestos industry knowingly sold deadly products, Volkswagen cheated emissions tests, Enron committed massive fraud, Lehman Brothers caused the 2008 crash, Wells Fargo created fake accounts, Ford sold cars with fatal defects, Equifax exposed personal data, Turing Pharma exploited drug prices, Amazon monitored and exploited workers, Coca-Cola drained water in drought zones, and Shell suppressed climate research, etc.

Big Tech’s Existing Abuse

Beyond abuse in many non-tech industries - another even larger problem is with the big technology companies controlling technologies that are also more powerful than any technology that has come before.

In particular - the technology companies have been horrific in this regard - and there’s been a very very slow regulatory response or really any accountability for some massive wrongdoings, including (but not limited to):

App Store rent seeking
- The fees on the App Store(s) are the definition of rent seeking.
The top social media sites are heavily consolidated and owned by the most powerful entities in the world, as shown in this chart:

Meta owns the top two and 3 of the top 9 social media sites. Not only this - Microsoft owns 1 of them, and the richest person in the world (Musk) owns 1 as well. Why have we all simply accepted that essentially all of our consumed social is owned by the biggest corporations and people in the world? By the way, this does not even count Threads (owned by Meta) because its a chart from 2023. How has the government not forced, at least, Meta to divest Facebook and Instagram already??

This power has been wielded for extremely nefarious purposes - such as election interference, general misinformation, massive foreign interference in our society causing unrest, selling of data, substantial increase in depression of adolescents, etc. Social media is the most powerful technology, that you’re allowed to privately own, ever.

Existing AI Abuse

By the way, the abuse of AI for profit is already happening. Let’s walk through a few examples, check out the links on each list item for more information on one specific instance:

Deepfakes in Revenge Porn
- Many cases have emerged where AI-generated deepfake technology was used to create fake explicit videos of individuals, often women, and shared without consent.
Voice Cloning in Fraud
- In 2021, cybercriminals used AI-based voice cloning to impersonate a company director in the United Arab Emirates, deceiving a bank manager into transferring $35 million. This sophisticated heist involved cloning the director’s voice to authorize fraudulent transactions.
AI-Generated Harassment
- Some individuals use chatbots, such as GPT-based systems, to generate hundreds of abusive messages or harass others online, overwhelming victims with toxic content.
Disinformation Campaigns
- Elections in many countries have been influenced to the point of changing the result, AI is being used already to subvert democracy.
AI-Powered Stalking
- Tools like Clearview AI, which scrapes social media and other online platforms, have been misused by private individuals for stalking, identifying, and tracking people without their consent.
AI in Child Exploitation
- Offenders are utilizing AI tools to create hyper-realistic, sexually explicit images of children. Law enforcement agencies are intensifying efforts to combat this misuse, as AI-generated child sexual abuse materials complicate the identification of real victims and pose significant challenges in prosecuting offenders.
AI being used to automatically rejecting healthcare claims
- UnitedHealthcare is charged with using an AI system with a 90% error rate to deny elderly patients medically necessary post-acute care, forcing early discharges and financial burdens; or worse.
Many instances where AI is convincing people to do extremely bad things.

And these are just some of the abuses.

While nationalization won’t fix all of these things, nationally owned AI can help fight against bad actors instead of being used by the bad actors (to profit the richest corporations and people on the planet). A lot (the majority?) of these abuses use AI developed and deployed right here in the USA.

The Power of AI

What is particularly interesting about AI at the scale of some of the systems we have seen recently is that they have an extremely large barrier to entry for any potential competitors. Could any non-massive company/individual afford to buy thousands of GPUs and pay the energy to train a model that is even remotely competitive with the existing models? Of course not. There is some nuance here due to the fact that some components created by some of the corporations are open source, but that fact largely doesn’t change much (although I do think this presents issues that I will cover in the next article in the series).

The current power of AI and the inevitable power of AI is extreme. Even beyond the power of labor automation (covered in Part 2) - the applications in weaponry, impersonation, mass social manipulation, etc make AI a large enough risk to not leave it in the hands of the tech companies that have already let us down and hurt society. For example, any AI weapon will not be a normal weapon - they will be almost assuredly unbeatable, it’ll be like the Manhattan Project all over, but accelerating a lot faster and far more dangerous. More on weapons a little later.

For context, remember, no private company owns or has ever owned even a singular nuclear weapon, and they cannot be deployed by a corporation.

It will not be long before whoever controls the most powerful AI systems will have the ability to control every other institution, organization, and individual. And in the meantime, the increasing power the corporations control can be used to prevent competition, sway public opinion, prevent backlash & regulation, censor citizens & journalists, etc.

As powerful as owning social media is, AI is exponentially more powerful. By the way, the companies who are currently leading, and are far ahead, in AI - also own social media networks. That combo is even more terrifying.

The leeway ceded with social media must not be repeated with something exponentially riskier. For all of the above reasons, I believe I have demonstrated the risks of corporately owned AI.

Why Nationalization Solves For This

Even ignoring the points made in Part 2 (Labor) - the points here alone, I believe, demonstrate the risks of maintaining private ownership of AI and therefore the need for nationalization.

In the USA, corporations are legally much harder to hold accountable for abuses than the federal government. The Bill of Rights directly limits government power and ensures protections for individuals, such as freedom of speech, due process, and protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. These constitutional guarantees provide a legal framework for holding the government accountable in ways that simply don’t apply to corporations, which are primarily governed by statutory laws and regulations rather than constitutional mandates.

This fundamental difference underscores why nationalization can provide greater oversight and public accountability. This is not to say the government is held to account enough, by the way - this is not the case but here are some reasons why they are held to account far more than corporations:

Fiduciary Duty: Corporations prioritize shareholders, not public welfare, limiting accountability.
Limited Liability: Corporate structures shield individuals from personal accountability.
Lobbying Power: Corporations influence regulations, often weakening enforcement.
Opacity: Corporations operate privately, unlike the government, which is subject to transparency laws like FOIA.
Legal Resources: Corporations use vast resources to delay or avoid accountability.
Public Oversight: The federal government is subject to checks, balances, and public scrutiny that corporations avoid.
Examples: Cases like Enron, Purdue Pharma, and the widespread and extreme corporate misconduct during the financial crisis show how corporations and those who run them evade meaningful penalties, even when their actions cause massive and unprecedented harm.

AI’s immense and accelerating power should be controlled by an entity that the people collectively own and can oversee with transparency. In the USA, that entity is the federal government; lest the entities who control it, control us.

In the next part of the series, I will continue making the nationalization case by talking about how the market is not the most efficient way to allocate resources or drive innovation in AI, especially when public welfare and safety are at stake: Nationalize AI - Part 4 - Inefficient

Nationalize AI - Part 2 - Labor

2024-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

This is Part 2 in a multipart series on nationalizing AI:

Nationalize AI - Part 1 - Defining The Problem
Nationalize AI - Part 2 - Labor
Nationalize AI - Part 3 - Corporate Power
Nationalize AI - Part 4 - Inefficient
Nationalize AI - Part 5 - Superiority
Nationalize AI - Part 6 - Conclusion

Labor

Overall, my thesis regarding labor and AI, for the purposes of this article, is broken down between two major points - ethics and employment. There’s plenty of interchange and correlation between the two, however specifically breaking it up here will allow me to be more pointed, especially about a specific ethical problem.

Ethics of Stealing

A critical foundation of the recent developments in AI is the data that is used for training. The specifics of how it is used and it’s part of the process here is less important than the fact that this data is largely publicly available data generated by billions of humans.

Ethically, how is it acceptable to do the following:

Use data generated by billions of humans
- A lot of which is copyrighted, by the way!
Create an AI system that uses that data
Profit by charging businesses and other people for use of the system
- In reality, currently, a lot of the money is from venture capital, but the same ethical issue persists (or perhaps is even worse?).

Granted, a lot of the data is not generated necessarily by citizens of the USA - which is an interesting counterpoint; although my response to that is that should be globally owned instead of by any one nation. But for now, that seems far more impractical. Nationalization would likely be a critical first step towards globalized ownership, anyway. 

While this is already a problem - profiting by using the free labor of others (who generated this data) at this scale - this only gets worse as the systems improve.

Billions of people contributed, and the CEO of OpenAI is driving a car around that costs 5 million dollars.

Unethical.

Employment

We do know, that these AI systems are useful for various tasks. I’ve used ChatGPT, for example, a lot of people have. It is useful! The usefulness is already resulting in increased productivity in a lot of industries.

Overall, as a society, we do want productivity to increase, so what is the problem?

Let’s take a step back and talk about, largely, non-AI related productivity gains. Other technologies, process improvements, etc. A critical issue we’ve been facing - which has led to historically bad inequality - is that productivity gains are not being met with the same % of an increase in wages, and it’s getting worse:

By the way - this is not strictly a partisan issue. Control of the presidency and congress have been both parties during this time frame (1979 - 2024), although it really started accelerating around when Reagan’s policies started (which Democrats & Republicans have refused to address / fix because of their corporate donors - but that’s a topic for a different day).

There’s many different angles to this, and it involves multiple groups in the upper class (shareholders, as well, for example) - but here is one example that is particularly stunning.

The two lines are realized vs granted compensation for CEOs represented as multipliers of the typical worker in their respective industries. The difference between realized and granted (the two lines) are not especially important for the context of this section. The main point here is that before 1980 - CEOs made “only” ~31 times the typical worker and now it’s over ~344 times as much. Note, the footnote in the image says this but this data is from the top 350 companies in the country specifically.

This is not a post primarily about income inequality - but it is critical to my thesis to show that productivity gains are not going to the average worker but to the members of the upper class.

Critically, I am not claiming nationalizing AI will solve this preexisting problem; but that it will prevent it from becoming worse due to the actions of private AI companies.

Effects on Employment

Short and Medium term

The effects on the labor market have already started. Increased productivity is common in many industries, as I mentioned before. As we know - the outcome of productivity gains are not resulting in rewards for workers, but rather increasing compensation for CEOs and shareholders. Nationalization of AI would ensure this is not the case.

While it is true that some segment of the affected labor force can shift, for now, this will not be the case forever.

Long Term

Despite my focus here on the current/short term effects on the labor market - it is my opinion that over some longer time frame, that AI will certainly be able to do every single job. This is a marked difference of AI versus new technologies in the past (printing press, internet, etc) which generated or shifted jobs in new or other sectors. An infinitely duplicatable, more-than-human-capable AI does not leave room for any job for any human.

The Long Term Is Likely Relatively Short

OpenAI is already talking about how AI could replace all / subsections of the labor force:

“He’s going to be right there at the beginning of it, maybe even as things like AGI, we get there,” she (OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar) said on Tuesday, referring to autonomous systems that surpass humans in most economically valuable tasks. Source
- The time frame being referred to here is within the next 4 years (!!!!!!)
“I want the door open to everything,” Friar said in an interview, when asked about a recent report that the company has discussed a $2,000 monthly subscription for its AI products. “If it’s helping me move about the world with literally a Ph.D.-level assistant for anything that I’m doing, there are certainly cases where that would make all the sense in the world.” Source
“OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Mira Murati said last fall that AGI will be reached within the next 10 years.” Source
- As previously mentioned, this is the point where most/all economically valuable tasks could be performed by AI.

This is coming soon.

Nationalization

To fully round out the earlier point on ethics for a second, it is wholly unacceptable that people and companies are getting rich by stealing from everyone and then benefiting from workers’ productivity gains and/or obsoleting their jobs.

In summary - the socialization of AI’s benefits, which in my view requires nationalization - is necessitated for these reasons:

AI is already driving significant productivity gains in the labor market. However, as demonstrated earlier, the fruits of productivity gains, of course including those predating AI, have not been shared equitably with workers.
- Over a longer period of time, it is clear that AI will make humans obsolete for labor.
These systems are built upon the stolen labor outputs of everyone.

This is only part two of the series, but in my estimation - already - these issues alone prove my thesis on the necessity of nationalization.

In the next part of this series, we will explore how corporate consolidation of power further necessitates the nationalization of AI: Nationalize AI - Part 3 - Corporate Power

Nationalize AI - Part 1 - Defining The Problem

2024-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

This is Part 1 in a multipart series on nationalizing AI:

Nationalize AI - Part 1 - Defining The Problem
Nationalize AI - Part 2 - Labor
Nationalize AI - Part 3 - Corporate Power
Nationalize AI - Part 4 - Inefficient
Nationalize AI - Part 5 - Superiority
Nationalize AI - Part 6 - Conclusion

As we’ve seen multiple breakthroughs in AI - I have been thinking a lot about the short, medium, and long term consequences. I have come to the opinion that, over some undefined but likely relatively short timeline, there are really two potential futures.

I do have a predisposition towards the nationalization of certain industries, particularly ones that are extremely harmful because they are run privately (health insurance is one such example, but hardly the only). While each of these industries becoming publicized would represent large quality of life improvements for the American people - AI nationalization dwarfs all the others by multiple times.

What do I mean by consequences? Well, I’d like to frame the discussion in these areas of concern.

Effect on labor
Corporate power
Inefficiency of private AI
AI Superiority

Now, obviously - each of these are extremely interdependent and so it is a bit hard to cleanly divide the supporting points of each section; but I will do my best.

Assumptions

The main assumption I’d like to put forth is that AI is powerful and will continue to accelerate. The time frame is in question, but the assumption is at some point we will have AI more intelligent and capable than any human or group of humans.

What could nationalization look like?

Well, at a high level - in my scenario, it could go something like this:

The federal government creates its own AI lab
- The law must define the goals of this lab and regulations therein.
- It would be critical that it is a program with transparency, oversight, and regulation more comprehensive than any existing program.
It outlaws private research on AI and/or direct ownership of certain / amount of GPUs/chips.
- You’d also need to outlaw citizens working on AI in other countries.
- This may feel radical - however there is precedent for such an action. Consider that any given private company or citizen can not develop a nuclear weapon.
Consolidate the existing AI labs under the federal government’s AI lab
- The goals and research direction would likely change from the current private labs, but its goals and research direction would be clearly defined and transparent to the public.
Institute direct rebate programs to citizens (especially to anyone affected directly by job loss due to AI)
- Perhaps direct rebate is not the correct way to go here, but the point would be to socialize the benefits of AI - however that looks.

My thesis, which I hope to convince you of by the end of the series, is that we must nationalize AI; and to a lesser extent, that it should look like the outline above.

In the next part of the series, we will discuss the effect of AI on the labor market and why it demonstrates a strong reason to nationalize: Nationalize AI - Part 2 - Labor

Jon Stewart & Bernie Sanders on Rebuilding Trust & Efficacy in the Government

2024-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

Based on the knee-jerk reactions on social when I posted my last Jon Stewart must-watch - Jon Stewart - Why Men Are Leaving the Left - there are a lot of people who really don’t have much respect for Jon Stewart at this point. And I know that is also the case with Bernie Sanders, as well, especially in a specific part of the democratic party.

I was also out on both of these guys until recently. I don’t believe Bernie would have won, necessarily, but I do subscribe, now, to the idea that politics now is less about left vs right but really establishment vs anti-establishment.

The points talked about in the video are critical, in my opinion, to the election loss. I don’t 100% agree with everything, but largely - I find the analysis correct.

If you watch, I request you watch with an open mind, and of course - I don’t expect you to agree!

Tariffs Part 2: An Impossible Balance

2024-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

This is Part 2 of a multiple part series.

Tariffs Part 1: An Introduction
Tariffs Part 2: An Impossible Balance
Tariffs Part 3: Foreign Relations, Reactions, and Retaliations

As a reminder, this post (Part 2) and the previous one (Part 1) in this series are intended to be relatively generic, providing non-partisan information on tariffs and the pros and cons thereof. While Part 1 is not technically a prerequisite, you will need to have read it or generally have some base knowledge of tariffs and their effects on an economy.

Additionally, we cannot account for every complex variable in an economy, so this discussion is intended to provide a relatively high-level, generalized analysis centered on outcomes that are highly likely based on established economic principles.

I also am not currently talking, in these posts, specifically about current policy proposals or discussions. This post does, however, consider a hypothetical issuance of a large-scale tariff program and its implications on the current economy.

Due to the length of Part 1, I did not delve into at least two additional important consequences of tariffs with the level of detail necessary to further round out our understanding of the potential severity that tariffs — especially large-scale ones — may or may not cause.

Both of these outstanding issues on my mind are particularly pernicious, in my opinion, but I will only tackle one here for now - as to attempt to keep the length of this reined in.

The image above is a bit much, but I thought it was funny.

An Impossible Balance?

Defining the hypothetical

Summary In the case of the issuance of a large tariff program, such as described; inflation rises, job loss occurs, and the economy slows. This is referred to as stagflation. 

For the purpose of this article, let’s imagine our (USA) government issuing large tariffs - large, in this case, meaning a high percentage on the majority (or all?) imported goods.

The mechanics are covered in Part 1, however, this course of action would likely cause relatively severe:

Inflation.
Overall job loss in the broader economy.
Overall reduction in aggregate demand (growth slows or turns to loss).

This is a particularly challenging situation, sometimes colloquially referred to as stagflation.

Although the reduction in demand puts downward pressure on prices (disinflation), this effect is dampened by the inflationary effects of the tariffs. Perhaps, so much so, that inflation keeps rising - especially with particularly high tariffs on a high enough amount of goods.

And so, imagine this incredible situation that we would be in here - rising unemployment and increased inflation. An economy can handle relatively moderate rises in one - but not typically both at once without intense problems.

The Federal Reserve’s Task

Summary The Federal Reserve is tasked to balance unemployment and prices as best it can, via monetary policy. The primary mechanism discussed is the raising and lowering of interest rates. Raising them tends to slow the economy and inflation, while lowering them tends to stimulate the economy and raise inflation. 

One of the most important roles of the Federal Reserve (aka ‘The Fed’), the U.S. Central Bank, is managing monetary policy.

This is the dual mandate of The Fed:

Maintaining the maximum sustainable employment while maintaining a stable inflation rate.
Trying to maintain stable prices.

So - how does The Fed do this? Well a few ways - but one of the main levers is adjusting interest rates. I won’t go into detail on the specifics there. At a high level - changing the interest rates can be used to indirectly affect prices (inflation / disinflation) by adjusting them in the following way:

Raising interest rates helps reduce inflation by slowing demand in the economy, but this comes at the cost of slowing growth & higher unemployment. Conversely, lowering rates can stimulate the economy but fuels inflation.

The mechanisms through which these actions cause these changes is not material here, but if you’re interested let me know on Bluesky and perhaps I will write about that at another time.

The Impossible Balance

Summary Considering stagflation, The Federal Reserve is placed into the harsh reality of being forced to raise interest rates, in order to reduce inflation. 

So, going back to our situation in the economy after the issuance of the hypothetical large tariffs. Rising inflation and rising unemployment.

In this case, what could or would the government do to counteract these issues through fiscal policy, outside the Federal Reserve’s actions? Introduce stimulus programs or cash via Congress, and inflation rises. Cut spending to reduce aggregate demand, and more jobs are lost.

Similarly, what is The Federal Reserve to do, here? It is between a rock and a hard place; but nevertheless - forced to act.

Considering that The Fed would certainly prioritize avoiding runaway inflation - it would either leave rates where they are for longer or even more likely — raise them further.

Then What?

Summary The economy, in the state of stagflation, and considering The Fed's action - raising the interest rate, is thrown into an even deeper recession in order to attempt to get things back on track over the long term. 

Well, to summarize the series of events, from the beginning:

The damaging effects of these large-scale tariffs would place the larger economy into a state of stagflation
- A challenging situation in which unemployment and inflation are rising while economy is slowing.
We explored how The Fed would now be stuck in a tough position, basically forced to raise rates to curb inflation.

As discussed earlier in The Federal Reserve’s Task section, raising interest rates helps dampen inflation but also slows the economy, leading to job loss.

In conclusion, the first-order effects of the tariffs are severe enough, but The Fed would then be compelled to push the economy into a deeper recession to set it on a path for long-term recovery. Such a recovery might take years, depending on the magnitude of the stagflation and the effectiveness of coordinated policy responses such as fiscal stimulus.

Why would a government, with a stable economy, purposefully risk throwing itself into long-term economic chaos immediately after suffering (and recovering from) high inflation? Why issue such large and sweeping tariffs and commit an unforced error of this magnitude? Surely you wouldn’t, right?

I beg your pardon?

2024-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

Image license

So, Biden pardoned his son Hunter yesterday - and the reaction has been very mixed.

Some of the main criticisms I am seeing so far, and I’ll give my thoughts.

He previously said he would not pardon Hunter.
- Sure, but the situation has drastically changed. The next president has explicitly talked about targeting people he considers “enemies.” Remember, this obsession with Hunter Biden has been purely political, driven by Trump and his allies. Hunter would not face the same scrutiny for his crimes if he were not a Biden.
It normalizes “breaking norms” - and will be used by the next administration as an excuse to break norms.
- This criticism is ridiculous on its face, especially considering Trump’s first term and the rhetoric he has been using during his campaign.
- Either way - I’m not convinced this move “breaks norms” to the extent many believe. It’s certainly not ideal, but it’s far from a wild or a severe situation, with all the context considered. As a reminder, Hunter’s convictions are unrelated to Joe Biden—they are tax and gun charges.
There are many people who deserve pardons just as much, if not more.
- This is absolutely true. Biden should have announced this pardon alongside many pardons he ought to issue. There’s significant injustice he has the power to at least partially address.
- My point here also addresses rule of law concerns: there should not be different rules for the President’s family. Again, Biden needs to correct other similar injustices as soon as possible before he leaves office.

Overall, I am not surprised Biden pardoned his son, despite him insisting he was not going to previously. It is also fine, and won’t encourage anything that wouldn’t already happen under the next administration. But, Biden has a lot more work to do to fix many injustices before he is gone.

Additionally, this outrage once again shows how high the bar is for Democrats but so abysmally low for MAGA. Democrats are expected to be perfect and the other side could literally do anything and it is shrugged off.

Tariffs Part 1: An Introduction

2024-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

This is Part 1 of a multiple part series.

Tariffs Part 1: An Introduction
Tariffs Part 2: An Impossible Balance
Tariffs Part 3: Foreign Relations, Reactions, and Retaliations

There’s…. been a lot of talk around tariffs recently.

This is really a part one of a multi-part series. The goal of this part one post, today, is to give an overview of what a tariff is & what the pros and cons are.

For the most part, there is not much mentioned here about specific proposals or anything of the sort; but do check back soon because I will be going into the specifics in future posts.

This is meant to be a non-partisan and non-biased look at tariffs as a whole.

Additionally, since this is quite a dense post, I provided summaries in the sections that are longer. I recommend reading everything, especially the latter portions of the post - but the summaries are there if you want them.

The What

So, what exactly are tariffs?

A tariff is a tax imposed on imported or exported goods - for the purposes of this post, we will focus on import tariffs. As that is what is currently being talked about by politicians in the USA (although, unfortunately, the concrete policy proposals’ details have been lacking and inconsistent).

The Who

Who pays import tariffs?

Summary The entity importing the foreign good pays the tariff; not the foreign country or entity in the foreign country. 

This is one of the least understood aspects of tariffs in the current discourse.

The business or person importing the foreign good is the one who pays the tariff.

Let’s talk through an example:

Imagine a company (Company A) in the USA is currently importing shirts to sell in their stores from another country:

The foreign country or the entity inside that country does not pay any tariff or tax.
Company A (inside the USA) pays the tariff.
Company A passes the cost of that tariff onto the consumer (you and me), raising the end price (inflation).

The Why

Summary The main reasons why governments implement import tariffs are to _try_ to: protect domestic industries, raise revenues, retaliate against other countries, and protect national security interests. 

Countries typically intend one or more of the following effects, when imposing a tariff on imported goods:

To try to protect an industry
- For example, a country might impose a tariff on cars to attempt to make the domestic industry more competitive.
- Similarly, a country might have a new industry that has not scaled up yet so they intend to protect it - so it can grow and compete.
To raise revenue
- Since the government collects the tariffs, they can be used to attempt to raise revenue for the government.
To try to retaliate against another country
- For example, Country A might impose a tariff that Country B believes is unfair or hurts one of their industries. In retaliation, Country B institutes a tariff that they believe hurts Country A.
Improve or preserve national security
- For example, a country might feel they need to produce things domestically in order to either prevent supply chain issues (e.g. computer chips) or that are used by the military (e.g. military arms)

The… What Next?

Are tariffs effective?

Summary Tariffs are generally not effective as a long-term economic strategy. While they may provide temporary protection to specific domestic industries, the benefits are often outweighed by significant downsides, such as higher costs for consumers, inflation, and job losses in industries reliant on imported goods. They are also an inefficient source of revenue, as reduced demand for imports over time diminishes their impact. Additionally, tariffs risk retaliation from other countries, which can escalate into trade wars and further harm domestic industries by restricting global market access. Although they can sometimes be justified for national security purposes, tariffs often lead to broader inefficiencies, such as misallocation of labor, stifled innovation, and reduced competitiveness, creating far more economic problems than they solve. 

It depends on the goal, so we will address each of the goals one by one.

Protecting an industry via tariffs
- While a specific industry might receive some temporary protection (that is, if the tariff even makes the domestic industry actually competitive on price) there are significant issues that almost always outweigh this (usually relatively small anyway) benefit (see the general downsides section a little bit further down).
- In exceedingly rare circumstances—especially if employment is a major concern—imposing a tariff might be the least harmful option. However, many governments opt for subsidies instead, as they generally have fewer downsides. It is critically important to use tariffs as sparingly as possible and on the smallest range of goods necessary.
As an attempt to raise revenue:
- First, the revenue generated by tariffs is relatively small compared to income taxes and cannot replace any significant percentage of income tax revenue.
- Over time, the amount raised from a given tariff tends to go down for a few main reasons:
  - For most goods, the increase in price will reduce the demand. This means less of that good is imported and therefore fewer tariffs are collected over time.
  - Even if the tariff does successfully shift demand to domestic goods (which, again, is certainly not a guarantee), there’s less demand for the import, and less of the tariff can be collected.
Retaliation
- If a country imposes tariffs to pressure another, the affected country might retaliate with its own tariffs.
  - This can escalate into a cycle of retaliation, leading to a full-blown trade war.
- Imposing a tariff on goods that another country exports often invokes retaliatory tariffs that hurt the original country’s industries.
  - This is yet another way that tariffs can make the problem you are trying to solve, worse, instead of better.
- This is a massive risk for a country, especially the more goods a country places tariffs on.
National Security
- When it comes to national security, it is widely recognized as both necessary and prudent for countries to prioritize domestic production of critical goods. Ensuring local manufacturing capacity can help prevent supply chain vulnerabilities and enhance readiness during times of conflict or crisis.

General downsides

Regardless of the intent of any given tariff; tariffs cause higher costs on the imported good (inflation).
- This cost does not only exist for the good itself, if it is an intermediate good (a good that is used in the production of something else). For example, steel. When the price of steel goes up, the price of products that use steel go up. This increases the risk of job losses and inflation of the goods in these downstream industries (and in the economy generally). This is a large example of tariffs causing more problems than they solve.
- By the way, about half of everything that we import are intermediary goods - which makes any proposal that adds tariffs to many goods even more risky.

Misallocation of Labor

Stepping back, it is important to understand why any given good is imported; another country can produce it at a lower cost.

Domestically, we generally produce what we are most efficient at or where the free market has efficiently allocated resources.

Given this, tariffs can shift workers into less efficient industries. This is crucial because it leads to several issues, including:

Lower overall productivity.
The goods we produce can become marginally less competitive on the global markets, as their prices increase.
Reallocation of capital (money, machinery, etc.) into less efficient industries and away from more productive ones. This stifles innovation, as resources are directed toward maintaining outdated or inefficient production. (For example, would you really want to redirect any resources at all from semiconductor manufacturing and toward the manufacturing of soap?)

Who benefits and who is hurt by tariffs?

The country imposing tariffs disproportionately harms its own working class by raising the cost of goods and increasing the risk of job losses in industries dependent on imports. It also negatively impacts companies and their workers reliant on imported materials by driving up production costs and reducing competitiveness.

Meanwhile, foreign producers might redirect goods to other markets, potentially benefiting consumers abroad through increased supply and lower prices. However, this effect is indirect and heavily influenced by global market dynamics.

Historic examples:

I will not go into all the details on each of these in this post; however, these are a few examples of tariffs causing significant economic downturns in history, each disproportionately harming the working class:

Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (1930, USA)
English Corn Laws (19th Century, UK)
British Navigation Acts (1651-1849)
Argentine Protectionism (20th Century)

Conclusion

Tariffs, while often proposed to protect domestic industries or raise revenue, overwhelmingly cause more harm than good. They disproportionately hurt consumers in the imposing country by increasing costs and fueling inflation, particularly for goods that are critical to supply chains.

Businesses relying on imports face higher production costs, making them less competitive, which can lead to job losses and reduced innovation. Retaliation from other countries can escalate into trade wars, compounding the damage and leaving industries worse off than before.

While there are rare cases, such as national security concerns, where tariffs can be justified, the general downsides — misallocation of labor, inefficiency, higher costs, retaliation, etc — almost always outweigh the benefits. Tariffs often solve one problem while creating many more.

More resources on Tariffs:

Separating Tariff Facts from Tariff Fictions (Cato)

The Basics of Tariffs and Trade Barriers (Investopedia)

Next up in the Tariffs series:

Tariffs Part 2: More Consequences

Jon Stewart - Why Men Are Leaving the Left

2024-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

I found this interesting, although I do not agree with all of it. Worth a watch, though.

I will post some thoughts on the election loss soon.

Then, Jesus Said...

2024-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

I was raised to be a Christian, although I never truly believed. I attended church, religious school, etc. I still feel that there is no God. However, in recent years I have taken to being particularly interested in the teachings of Jesus, in a purely secular way.

Specifically - the teachings around radical love, empathy, care for others, etc.

I have continually been disappointed by so-called “Christians” in this country - who claim to live by His teachings but act in a different way.

I came across this post earlier and thought it was a sharp and insightful parody of modern Christian hypocrisy:

There’s no question - Jesus would not advocate for repealing health care for millions, for a mass deportation program, for demonizing and alienating those who are not like you, etc.

It is pretty easy to find verses to support these points. I will follow up with more pointed examples in the future, though.

New site

2024-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

After the results of the last handful of weeks, especially after the most recent set of election results - I sure have had a lot of thoughts, reflections, etc on what:

Happened
What likely happens next
Predictions on the effects on specific policies

Buckle up!

The Liberty Pear

The Latino Vote Podcast: Republicans Under Pressure in Battleground Seats (Video)

Movies That Make You Think — Part 33

James Talarico on The Breakfast Club: The Texas Senate Race (Video)

I Endorse Troy Jackson for U.S. Senate (Maine)

I Endorse Gina Hinojosa for Governor of Texas

Movies That Make You Think — Part 32

The Latino Vote Podcast: Midterm Races to Watch (Video)

AOC Joins The Majority Report In Studio (Video)

Why Political Elites Are Terrified of Abdul El-Sayed (Video)

Why Latino Trump Voters Are At A Breaking Point

Abdul El-Sayed Speaks at the UAW 2026 Constitutional Convention

Abdul El-Sayed with Elizabeth Warren and Pramila Jayapal

Abdul El-Sayed’s Extended Interview with CBS News

Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Socialism, Politics & NYC

Zohran Mamdani on Netanyahu, New York, and AOC

Abdul El-Sayed with AOC and Bernie Sanders

Great TV Shows - Part 6

Movies That Make You Think — Part 31

I Endorse Francesca Hong for Governor of Wisconsin

Movies That Make You Think — Part 30

I Endorse Melat Kiros for Congress (CO‑01)

Charity Spotlight - New York Common Pantry

What is New York Common Pantry?

Why I like recommending them

How to support

Movies That Make You Think — Part 29

Movies That Make You Think — Part 28

I Endorse Yuh-Line Niou for State Senate (SD‑27)

Special Endorsement: Vote the NYC-DSA Slate on June 23

The slate

Why this matters

We Found The Radical Solution To Surveillance Pricing [Video]

I Took AOC to Deep Trump Country. They Agreed On One Thing. [Video]

Darializa Avila Chevalier on Running for Congress, Democratic Socialism & Fighting for Uptown NYC [Video]

Claire Valdez on Running for Congress in NY-07 [Video]

Movies That Make You Think — Part 27

Darializa Avila Chevalier on Hasan Piker [Video]

Movies That Make You Think — Part 26

I Endorse Sam Forstag for Congress (MT‑01)

I Endorse Tom Steyer for Governor of California

Movies That Make You Think — Part 25

I Endorse Effie Phillips-Staley for Congress (NY‑17)

I Endorse Dr. Adam Hamawy for Congress (NJ‑12)

Claire Valdez: Millennial Socialism [Video]

Graham Platner Wants a Democratic Revolution [Video]

Chris Rabb for Congress

Check these out — and please share!

Oh yeah: tomorrow is the big voting day

AOC's Inspiring Philadelphia Speech for Chris Rabb [Video]

Voting reminder

Chris Rabb Candidate Profile for Pennsylvania's 3rd Congressional District [Video]

Hasan Piker and Chris Rabb: Full Video

Why Political Elites Are Afraid Of This Oyster Farmer [Video]

Graham Platner On Service, Messaging & the Future for Democrats | The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart

Chris Rabb on The Majority Report [Video]

Movies That Make You Think — Part 24

I Endorse Darializa Avila Chevalier for Congress (NY‑13)

Charity Spotlight - Coalition for the Homeless

What is Coalition for the Homeless?

Why I like recommending them

How to support

Movies That Make You Think — Part 23

On the Issues: Chris Rabb for Congress, District 3 [Video]

Chris Rabb Philadelphia Congressional Forum Supercut [Video]

Zohran Mamdani: The 100 Days Interview [Video]

60,000 Trump Voters Just Elected a Socialist. We Asked Them Why. [Video]

Movies That Make You Think — Part 22

We Need More Democrats Like Effie Phillips-Staley [Video]

We Found The Radical Solution To Skyrocketing Grocery Prices [Video]

I Endorse Oliver Larkin for Congress

Endorsement: Chris Rabb for Congress (PA‑03) — 2026 Primary

Movies That Make You Think — Part 21 (March 2026)

Endorsement: Junaid Ahmed for Congress (IL‑08) — 2026 Primary

Why this endorsement

Movies That Make You Think — Part 20 (March 2026)

MAJOR 20TH EDITION POST!

Why I'm Backing James Talarico Over Jasmine Crockett — Texas Senate 2026

1) The GOP wants to face her in the General Election

2) Texas needs something to vote for, not just “fight” against energy