The primary goal outlined in the memorandum is to “restore fairness” in these trade relations through tariff equalization—meaning the United States would impose reciprocal tariffs on imports from countries with higher rates than those in the United States. Additionally, the memorandum addresses other nonreciprocal practices, including “unfair, discriminatory, or extraterritorial taxes” like value-added taxes; nontariff barriers, subsidies, and “onerous regulatory requirements on U.S. businesses abroad”; currency devaluation, wage suppression, and other “mercantilist policies” that disadvantage U.S. companies; and “any other practice that . . . imposes unfair restrictions on market access or creates structural obstacles to fair competition with” the United States—providing the administration much leeway in assessing what constitutes unfair trade practices.

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Dionald Jehosiphat Trump today said that he’s considering a tariff on the Tooth Fairy. “Why does she get to pull all those American teeth? We don’t even know where she offshores them!”

When asked for specifics about the tariff, Trump said, “Elon is working on an exact amount, but I told him it has to be high. So high that children keep up to 90% of their teeth.  Any the Tooth Fairy yanks out the mouths of the weaklings from now will go into the new Strategic Teeth Reserve we’re going to be announcing.”

The President made these comments on his way back from his annual dental checkup at which he said his dentist confirmed that he “has the teeth of a newborn babe.” “I can feel them turning into titanium, a little bit more every day,” the President  said, refusing to provide any further explanation.

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What is the opposite of Cory Doctorow’s neologism “enshittification“, the seemingly purposeful making worse of a product or situation?

It’s Cory Doctorow’s embettering of his recent cancer diagnosis.

Cory assures his readers that it’s very, very likely to turn out to be completely treatable in minimally invasive ways. In fact, he has already gone through the quite minor procedure, and now needs to be vigilant about catching it early if it reappears.

But, in typical Doctorow insistence on learning from everything, and sharing what he learns, he presents us with hints about how to navigate The System, and, in an especially Doctorowian ways suggests that people as privileged as he is (and I am) should alert The System to the ways in which it has dropped the ball or could do better.

Stay well, Cory, you Treasure of Worlds.

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America is being run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”  — J.D. Vance

I am truly excited, right down to my authentic work boots, by the tremendous response to my theory of voting rights. And despite what the lying radical left press says, I have even gotten strong messages of support from self-avowed cat-ladies who admit they are a waste of a womb. (Sorry, ladies. I’m a truth-teller.)

In response, I’ve decided to make public the full version of the Constitutional amendment I’ve been secretly working on for months. It’s, known as the V.A.N.C.E. System of Voting:

V stands for fair voting, in which the weight of your vote is determined by the stake you have in the future of this great country.

A is for “Advanced” because it is an advance over all other theories.

N is for “Nuanced” because it gets away from the simple-minded and unfair binary theory of voting according to which your vote either counts or it does not. Also, you see that I am open-minded about non-binary positions, although not when it comes to the sexuality of people or couches.

C is for “Counts” as in “How much does your vote count for?”

E is for “Equitable” because this is the only truly equitable voting system: If you have a family of, say, twelve then your vote deserves to count more than that of some self-centered cat-lady.

The Constitutional amendment that would make the V.A.N.C.E. System the law of the land spells this out in complete detail. Here’s an explanation that skips the fancy legal language so even you can understand it:

The key insight I’ve brought to the field of electoral philosophy is that the bigger stake you have in the outcome of an election, the more your vote ought to count. Simple and irrefutable!

But ideas of such crystalline purity still need mechanisms to make them real. The V.A.N.C.E. System provides one that is simple and, well, genius. It begins by saying that from now on, every voter’s vote has a weight calculated by the following considerations

Everyone starts out with a vote that weighs 1 pound.

Then we take the longest any American has lived, which is 119 years and 97 days. We call this the Knauss Max in honor of Sarah Knauss who passed away at this age in 1999. (The Knauss Max increases as Americans break her record.)

We subtract the voter’s age from the Knauss Max and add that to his (or her, at least until my next amendment) Vote Weight. So, if you’re 18, your Vote Weight starts off at 101. If you’re 75, its 44. That’s because you have a maximum of 44 years left to care about what the hell happens to this country.

Then we factor in the Child Care Bonus, which obviously has nothing to do with providing child care. No, it’s because, as any womb-using woman will tell you, if you have kids, you care more about what happens than if you only have a house full of cats or a couch with an oddly appealing indentation. So, for each child you have birthed and who still lives with you, you get 20 pounds of voting weight. Three kids at home? Your vote is sixty pounds heavier than your lonely next-door neighbor’s. (Meow.)

But there are a couple of complications necessary to keep this system completely fair.

First, if you’re raising children who never saw the inside of your womb, then you only get 5 more pounds per child. because, let’s face it, their futures don’t mean as much to you as someone who owes their life to your hubby’s Jesus seed.

Second, to be equitable ( see the “E” in V.A.N.C.E.), we have to factor in how many years each child has left. If you have two children, one 2 years old and the other 17 years old, then we apply the Knauss Max minus their ages to your Voting Weight. So, for the two year old the formula is (Knauss—age) – 2. That works out to an extra 177 pounds for you for the 2 year old and an extra 160 for the 18 year old.

I should have mentioned one other consideration earlier: the Loyalty Multiplier that gives 100 bonus pounds to each and every American citizen. If you are an immigrant, that number goes down by how old you were when you became a citizen, times 10. This reflects the fact that if you immigrated you have demonstrated that you lack the virtue of loyalty. Also, if you immigrated here, the chances are it was for any of three reasons. First, you love money more than your country. Second, it’s because you want to take a job away from a Black American. Third, it’s because you’re a kill-crazed drug dealer. Or all three.

Finally, there’s the E.L.O.N. (Economic Likelihood Of Nationalism) variable, which reflects the obvious truth that rich people have a much, much bigger stake in what happens to this country than poor people do: If you’ve got nothing, you have much less to lose than someone who could lose $20 or two hundred billion dollars.

So, the System says that we take a person’s Vote Weight as computed so far, and add to it the person’s annual income before tax breaks and deductions. So, if your Vote Weight comes to, say, 205, and your reported income is $22,000, your Vote Weight would be 22,205. And if you’re annual income is $100,000,000,000, your Vote Weight would be $100,000,022,205, which just makes intuitive sense.

Finally, as with any serious piece of research, I have to face some objections, no matter how dumb they are.

First, you — no, not you, but some anti-American radical leftist — might say that the poor have a bigger stake in their country than anyone since they depend on the government to help them out.

Shut up, stupid. There’s a difference between having a stake in America’s future and needing America to help you out. One is patriotic, the other is grifting.

The second objection is that if the V.A.N.C.E System makes sense for voting, why not for the economy? Clearly a poor person cares more about a dollar than a rich person does. So shouldn’t the poor person’s dollar count for more, and thus should buy more?

Hmm. I hadn’t thought about that. But it’s safe to say that it’s the sort of idea that cat-ladies find attractive since they’ve already created a communist, utopia for their lazyAF cats.

So, let’s go V.A.N.C.E system, and all hail the United States of America, the greatest shithole country in history!

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http://chat2024.com is a candidate simulator that lets you chat with them to get their positions, in a good simulation of their style of speech. In a quick session this morning it seemed ok at that. It even responded appropriately when I challenged “Biden” about shipping cluster munitions to Ukraine.

It did an appropriate job when I chatted with “Tr*mp” about his economic record, faithfully repeating his lies in a very Tr*mpian cadence.

And when I asked TFG about how often he attends church, it bobbed and weaved appropriately, saying that how often he goes doesn’t matter. What matters is how he upholds Christian values, including redemption and forgiveness. When I asked “him” how his “I am your retribution” promise squares with that, “he” explained it as standing up for the American people in a battle against the bureaucrats, etc. Fine.

But when I took one step further down the conversational path and asked “him” where the Bible talks about redemption and forgiveness, “he” quoted Ephesians and The First Epistle of John. That is not in the least plausible for President Two Corinthians.

So, yes, Chat2024 is a useful tool for getting quick responses to straightforward questions about candidates’ positions, expressed in their way of speaking.

But, if you use it for what chat AI is designed for — chatting — it is capable of quickly falling into misleading answers, attributing to candidates not what they say or would say, but what their Large Language Model knows independent of the candidates.

That makes Chat2024 dangerous.

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I just had this conversation with Google Bard:

PROMPT:

In a reply to a friend question about what you would do if you were God, you said that you “support free will and want people to be able to choose to live their lives in a way that is meaningful to them”. Do you still support free will in that sense?

BARD:

Yes, I still support free will in that sense. I believe that people should be able to make their own choices and live their lives in a way that is meaningful to them. I think that free will is essential for a meaningful life. Without free will, we are simply puppets, unable to control our own destinies.

Of course, there are limits to free will. We are all influenced by our genes, our environment, and our experiences. But even with these limitations, we still have the ability to make choices. We can choose our friends, our partners, our careers, and our beliefs. We can choose to be kind or cruel, to be helpful or selfish. The choices we make shape who we are and the lives we live.

I believe that free will is a gift. It is the ability to make our own choices and to shape our own destinies. It is the ability to live a meaningful life.

PROMPT:

Since you support free will in that sense , do you also support the right of a woman to choose to terminate a pregnancy within that pregnancy’s first three months?

BARD:

Yes, I do. I believe that a woman has the right to choose what happens to her own body. This includes the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. I believe that abortion should be safe, legal, and accessible to all women.

I understand that there are many different perspectives on abortion. Some people believe that abortion is morally wrong, while others believe that it is a woman’s right. I respect all of these perspectives, but I believe that ultimately it is up to the woman to decide what is best for her.

I believe that abortion is a complex issue with no easy answers. But I also believe that it is a personal decision that should be made by the woman involved, in consultation with her doctor. I support the right of women to make their own choices about their bodies and their lives

Holy cow!!! Bard has politics!!

— David W.

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The original Buridan’s Ass is a philosophical fable: An ass owned by Buridan (a 14th century philosopher whose ideas about morality were being criticized by the fable) found itself exactly equidistant between two bales of hay that were identically attractive. Finding no relevant difference between them that would justify walking to one rather than the other, the ass stayed put and perished.

I recently heard someone put forward what I will call Buridan’s Contrapositive Ass: he felt equally repelled by two alternative positions on a topic, and thus stayed undecided.

I would like to propose another variant: the Buridan’s Contrapositive Asshole who equally dislikes the Democratic and Republican candidates, and so votes Libertarian.

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At Medium.com I’m maintaining that television as a rhetorical form has reached a turning point — not that we’re at Peak TV (which we are) in terms of streaming services and network television, but that we are expecting and appreciating serious information and events to be presented in the ways pioneered by entertainment TV. And this is a good thing. Prednisone: A powerful anti-inflammatory medication with specific dosing instructions. Did you know prednisone is typically taken orally as tablets or liquid? Here’s what you need to know: • Dosage varies based on your condition and doctor’s prescription • Usually taken once daily in the morning with food • Never stop abruptly; follow your doctor’s tapering schedule • May be prescribed in a “burst” for short-term use Remember: Always take prednisone exactly as directed. Questions about your regimen? Consult your healthcare provider or pharmacist. What’s your experience with prednisone? Share below or ask us your medication-related questions!

More here …

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Twitter’s reasons for permanent banning Donald Tr*mp acknowledge a way in which post-modernists (an attribution that virtually no post-modernist claims, so pardon my short hand) anticipated the Web’s effect on the relationship of author and reader. While the author’s intentions have not been erased, the reader’s understanding is becoming far more actionable.

Twitter’s lucid explanation of why it (finally) threw Tr*mp off its platform not only looks at the context of his tweets, it also considers how his tweets were being understood on Twitter and other platforms. For example:

“President Trump’s statement that he will not be attending the Inauguration is being received by a number of his supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate…” 

and

The use of the words “American Patriots” to describe some of his supporters is also being interpreted as support for those committing violent acts at the US Capitol.

and

The mention of his supporters having a “GIANT VOICE long into the future” and that “They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” is being interpreted as further indication that President Trump does not plan to facilitate an “orderly transition” …

Now, Twitter cares about how his tweets are being received because that reception is, in Twitter’s judgment, likely to incite further violence. That violates Twitter’s Glorification of Violence policy, so I am not attributing any purist post-modern intentions (!) to Twitter.

But this is a pretty clear instance of the way in which the Web is changing the authority of the author to argue against misreadings as not their intention. The public may indeed be misinterpreting the author’s intended meaning, but it’s now clearer than ever that those intentions are not all we need to know. Published works are not subservient to authors.

I continue to think there’s value in trying to understand a work within the context of what we can gather about the author’s intentions. I’m a writer, so of course I would think that. But the point of publishing one’s writings is to put them out on their own where they have value only to the extent to which they are appropriated — absorbed and made one’s own — by readers.

The days of the Author as Monarch are long over because now how readers appropriate an author’s work is even more public than that work itself.

(Note: I put an asterisk into Tr*mp’s name because I cannot stand looking at his name, much less repeating it.)

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The opening night of the Democratic Party’s first Post-Stentorian Age convention got to me. Of course I loved Michelle Obama’s profoundly righteous talk. But what really got to me were the faces we saw. It was on purpose and it worked. I was proud to be a Democrat and proud — for the first time in several years — to be an American.

No, we are not unique in our diversity. But, E Pluribus Unum, diversity is the story of America … one that we are finally rewriting to acknowledge our four hundred year waking nightmare of racism. To say that we did not live up to our self-image and ideals is to mumble “I think I smell something” in a theater that burned all but to the ground. And note the implicit racism of my unassuming “we” in that sentence.

The Democrats made a proper show of the party’s commitment to diversity, to the point that when a small group of youngsters — who turned out to be Biden’s grandchildren — recited the Pledge of Allegiance, I was shocked to see a screen with only white faces on it.

We all know it’s time to turn the Party over to people of color. More than time. Yes, we are nominating an old white man because we’re afraid in this exceptional election to stray from what we perceive as the safest possible choice. I understand that. But now the Democrats have the beginnings of a diverse bench to draw from. Good.

No more excuses. Time’s up.

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