Stoicism’s appeal to the rich and powerful
2
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skybrian's recent activity
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Comment on Eleven spouses on what it’s like to live with someone on Ozempic in ~life
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Comment on San Francisco jails are packed for the first time in decades in ~society
skybrian LinkFrom the article: Although, looking at the graph, another way to put is is that the number of people in jail is about the same as just before the pandemic, and lower than any year between 1985 and...From the article:
Two months after inauguration day, San Francisco’s county jail population has surged by more than 10%. Depending on the day, the jails are officially over capacity, with upward of 1,300 incarcerated people and 1,236 beds.
This marks the county’s highest incarceration rate since before the pandemic, even as crime in almost all categories is dropping. The surge — which is expected to increase — came at a time when the number of beds is the lowest since 1985.
Although, looking at the graph, another way to put is is that the number of people in jail is about the same as just before the pandemic, and lower than any year between 1985 and 2013.
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The mayor has asked police for more enforcement along corridors with the most visible quality-of-life issues, including Sixth Street south of Market and Mission Street near the 16th Street BART station. He has also asked SFPD Chief William Scott to double down on operations around Union Square, with officers moved out of district stations for downtown duty.
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Not all of those arrested end up incarcerated, but many more do now that the DA sends fewer to diversion programs and the sheriff has ended electronic monitoring.
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The Sheriff’s Department plans to reopen a dormitory in San Bruno this month to make room for the new arrestees everyone agrees are likely on the way. So far, every reopened dorm has filled up almost immediately. If incarceration outpaces the sheriff’s efforts, a worse-case scenario could see San Francisco forced to rent beds in jails across the bay in Alameda County, which has one of the largest and historically most violent and troubled jails in California.
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San Francisco jails are packed for the first time in decades
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Comment on US Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to vote yes on GOP spending bill in ~society
skybrian Link ParentIt seems like there are lots of Democrats trying to persuade on social media, including many members of Congress? But it doesn't seem to be all that effective. Although, it's unclear if that...It seems like there are lots of Democrats trying to persuade on social media, including many members of Congress? But it doesn't seem to be all that effective.
Although, it's unclear if that really counts as a serious attempt - it's mostly preaching to the choir.
Maybe the lesson here is that persuasion is a lot harder than many people make it out to be.
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Comment on US Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to vote yes on GOP spending bill in ~society
skybrian Link ParentHow would they force it through anyway?How would they force it through anyway?
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Comment on The failure of the land value tax in the UK in ~humanities.history
skybrian LinkFrom the article: ... ... ... ... ... ...From the article:
Britain in the early 1900s became a case study in how administrative complexity can derail land value taxation. The tax cost more to administer than it collected, and it was so poorly worded that it ended up becoming a tax on builders’ profits, leading to a crash in the building industry. As a result, David Lloyd George, the man who introduced the taxes as chancellor in 1910, repealed them as prime minister in 1922. The UK has never fully reestablished a working property tax system.
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Not all countries failed as spectacularly as Britain, dooming not only the land value tax itself but also the existing property tax system it replaced, but few countries have successfully implemented a land value tax. Most countries that claim to have land value taxes, like Australia and Taiwan, exempt the two biggest uses of land: agriculture and owner-occupied housing.
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Following landowners’ mass defection from the Liberals in 1886, the Liberal coalition was able to unite around land value taxation. Land value tax fervor became increasingly dominant on the party’s left and among the grassroots, in part because of its potential as a tool to weaken the power of their political enemies, the large landowners, and in part to fix the growing crisis of local government funding. Starting in 1888, party conference attendees passed successive proposals for land taxation, leading to the inclusion of a land value tax proposal in the Liberal Party’s 1891 Newcastle Programme.
Although Britain already had two property taxes – an income tax, which included rental income, and a property tax with rates for residential and business properties – they appeared to be unable to cover local governments’ obligations.
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In 1900, three quarters of funding for local government activities – poverty relief, the police, education, and sanitation – came from taxing rental income. Since urban rents added up to about 10 percent of GDP at the time, this meant that one tenth of the economy was responsible for financing almost the entirety of local authority budgets. Property, and those who occupied or rented it, thus bore the brunt of the tax burden, paying around one third of the nation’s taxes compared to one tenth today.
Relying solely on property taxes might have been fine if local governments had only been responsible for investments that raised local property values. It was not uncommon for private landowners to build infrastructure, establish sanitation services, and run private security for their neighborhoods using the income they made renting out flats or selling leases. This method enabled the initial building and gradual intensification of the central London estates of Mayfair and Fitzrovia. Indeed, many cities around the world today fund their education, sanitation, and infrastructure from locally collected property taxes. In the US, the average state’s property tax revenue is around $2,000 per capita, similar to the revenue raised by local income taxes.
The problem for British local governments in the twentieth century was that they were also responsible for welfare benefits. Wealthier areas could easily afford the necessary taxes to support their small numbers of poorer residents. But poorer areas in the inner cities found this an increasingly difficult burden.
In urban areas, working-class households spent as much as one third of their income on rent. This included approximately seven percent of their income on rates. Meanwhile, upper-class homeowners with incomes of £1,000 or above could expect to pay around seven percent of their income in total on both rents (or mortgages) and rates. Poorer households therefore paid a much higher share of the property tax burden relative to their income.
The situation deteriorated during the 1890s and early 1900s, paradoxically due to a large expansion in the housing supply. The electrification of London’s railways and trams enabled further suburban expansion and a significant increase in housebuilding. Better-off working-class families moved to the suburbs, leaving poorer areas with an even larger relief burden. Rates rose between 30 and 50 percent in all districts of inner London between 1891 and 1901. A typical increase in rates, which was recorded in boroughs like Stepney and Camberwell, was from 6 shillings to 9 shillings per pound. This coincided with a sharp economic downturn beginning in 1905 that caused unemployment in urban areas to skyrocket to double digits, which only increased the pressure on local governments in cities and the ratepayers who supported them.
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There were close to ten million properties in the country that needed valuing, and for the majority of these properties, the land and structure had been traded together, meaning that there was no distinct market valuation of land to draw from. What’s more, in line with Georgist theory, the tax was supposed to credit owners for improvements they made to the land. But this meant calculating several hypotheticals, many of which had never been measured or recorded, including building and structure value and value contributed from plumbing, access to railways, and other infrastructure contributions.
The process was beyond the capacity of the government. In August 1910, the Liberals sent out 10.5 million copies of the notorious ‘Form 4’, which required owners to submit specific details on their income and the use and tenure of their properties. It also required them to estimate the site value themselves. Failure to return the document carried a fine of £50, about £7,500 in current prices.
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A common Georgist view was that property speculators hoard urban land, and land taxes would force them to develop it. In practice, the exact opposite happened. The additional taxes simply reduced builders’ profits and forced many to reduce production. The new taxes also devalued building land, leaving housebuilders with devalued collateral for their loans, which threatened to bankrupt many of them. As a result, instead of rising, building rates cratered, falling from 100,000 in 1909 to 61,000 in 1912.
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In the end, the outbreak of the First World War put the final nail in the land value tax coffin. In 1916, Asquith was replaced as prime minister by David Lloyd George, and the Liberal party split, with Lloyd George leading a coalition between the Conservatives and Liberal MPs loyal to him until 1922. The Conservatives were still opposed to the land value taxes and Lloyd George was not prepared to defend their continuation given their abject failure before the war. The valuation, frozen during the war, was formally ended in 1920, and the remaining land taxes were abolished by Lloyd George himself in 1922.
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The failure of the land value tax in the UK
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Comment on US Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to vote yes on GOP spending bill in ~society
skybrian Link ParentTo win elections, it might help to convince some of the sycophants too. If the fever breaks, that would really be something.To win elections, it might help to convince some of the sycophants too. If the fever breaks, that would really be something.
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Comment on US Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to vote yes on GOP spending bill in ~society
skybrian Link ParentOne theory I've read is that they want to be sure that the Republicans are blamed for all the bad stuff happening to the US government this year.One theory I've read is that they want to be sure that the Republicans are blamed for all the bad stuff happening to the US government this year.
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Comment on Donald Trump says he opened California’s water. Local officials say he nearly flooded them. in ~enviro
skybrian LinkArmy Corps knew Trump order would waste California water, memo shows (Washington Post) ... ... Here is the memo.Army Corps knew Trump order would waste California water, memo shows (Washington Post)
Col. Chad W. Caldwell, commander of the Army Corps’ Sacramento district, wrote that the water that poured out of Lake Kaweah and Success Lake “could not be delivered to Southern California directly.” To do so would have required several steps of coordination with state and federal agencies to transport the water to a rarely used connection point, and it quickly became clear that was impossible in such little time, according to the memo.
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An Army Corps spokesman declined to answer questions about what happened behind the scenes before and during the water release but said agency leaders routinely write such memos, known as memorandums for record, “to show the authority or basis for an action taken.”
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The release from the two Sierra Nevada reservoirs — which technically fall under the authority of the Army Corps but are managed in coordination with other federal, state and local agencies — did not cause major flooding, and some of the water flowed underground to sites that store groundwater for future use.
Here is the memo.
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Comment on Is US President Donald Trump planning to invade other countries? in ~society
skybrian LinkTrump often says dramatic stuff. I don't try very hard to understand what it really means. I think it's more useful to read about what the Trump administration is doing. If there are serious plans...Trump often says dramatic stuff. I don't try very hard to understand what it really means. I think it's more useful to read about what the Trump administration is doing. If there are serious plans for a war, it will leak.
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Comment on US Pentagon shocked by Donald Trump’s order to house migrants in Guantánamo Bay in ~society
skybrian LinkFrom the "nobody predicted this" department: Remaining migrants at Guantanamo Bay moved to Louisiana to await deportation (ABC News)From the "nobody predicted this" department:
Remaining migrants at Guantanamo Bay moved to Louisiana to await deportation (ABC News)
All of the remaining migrants being held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have been moved to Louisiana over the last two days, according to a U.S. official.
In late January, President Donald Trump announced he was signing an executive order "to instruct the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay."
But since then, the number of migrants sent to be temporarily held there has only reached the low hundreds, and now the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security are discussing whether to make further use of the base.
U.S. officials confirmed the 195 tents, capable of housing 500 migrants, at Guantanamo Bay did not meet ICE's requirements for holding migrants, such as having air conditioning and other amenities.
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Comment on 6,000 Syrians work as doctors in Germany. Some weigh whether to stay or go. in ~society
skybrian LinkFrom the article: ...From the article:
Germany opened its doors a decade ago to nearly 1 million Syrians, taking in more than any other country in Europe. Today, some 6,000 Syrian doctors make up the single largest group of foreign-born physicians, filling vital gaps in care at hospitals and clinics from the Alps to the Baltic Sea. That is especially true in rural areas, where attracting doctors can be hard. But even in big cities, Syrian doctors now make up the majority of attending physicians at some medical practices.
“Whole areas in the health sector would fall away if all the Syrians who work here now were to leave our country,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said.
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[Four interviewed doctors] were quickly gripped by conflicting sentiments. Syria — where over half the hospitals are now nonfunctional, and even more are facing the threat of closure due to funding shortfalls — desperately needs them. For many of them, though, even with all the anti-migrant sentiment, Germany has begun to feel like home.
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6,000 Syrians work as doctors in Germany. Some weigh whether to stay or go.
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Comment on PassKey account takeover in all mobile browsers (via Bluetooth) in ~comp
skybrian LinkFrom the article: ... ... So, I guess it's fixed.From the article:
There are two clear prerequisites for this attack to work against a victim on a mobile device:
- An attacker controlled (evil) device within BLE range (< 100m)
- A victim visiting an attacker controlled page
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All major mobile browsers were found vulnerable, in this case the vulnerability is simply allowing FIDO:/ intents to be triggerable by a page. All fixes consisted in blacklisting such URIs from being navigable.
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I would like to give special thanks to all the browsers teams for fixing this issue relatively quickly.
So, I guess it's fixed.
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of March 10 in ~society
skybrian Link ParentI don't think there's a serious intent. He is showing he is strong, because showing strength is goodI don't think there's a serious intent. He is showing he is strong, because showing strength is good
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A history of the San Francisco bouncy ball TV ad
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Comment on New anti-obesity drugs will outperform Ozempic in ~health
skybrian Link ParentYeah, the cheapest option is mentioned in the article too, but nobody wants to encourage it.Yeah, the cheapest option is mentioned in the article too, but nobody wants to encourage it.
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Comment on Midweek Movie Free Talk in ~movies
skybrian Link ParentIt was interesting that La La Land essentially has two endings - you get to see the happy ending and the other one. I thought that The Umbrellas of Charbourg was very sad in a rather predictable...It was interesting that La La Land essentially has two endings - you get to see the happy ending and the other one.
I thought that The Umbrellas of Charbourg was very sad in a rather predictable way. ("How did this happen?" "In the usual way, I assure you.") The most surprising thing about it was that there wasn't any plot twist preventing things from going as one would expect, given the circumstances.
The separation in La La Land seems more like a choice that could have gone either way. Why not go to Paris?
I'm wondering what people do when they reach their goal weight. Is it practical to take a smaller dose to avoid some of the side effects?