We're not doing any of this because a lot of people were going to catch a cold. We're not destroying our economies and societies because a tiny number of people felt tired for a few months after a cough. We aren't allowing babies and children to die because a new strain

Would anyone like to admit why he cc'd himself in an email Wei Dai would see at ibiblio's host address? I have a few ideas.

was the .ae ccTLD a nod to Tim Berners-Lee/registries that issue top level country code domains? Is that why Tel Aviv is a place I commonly find OTC/Bitcoin related companies and DAC/dev protocols and operations based? Why UAE/Israel have opened commerce bilaterally in 2020?

Bitcoin is worldwide P2P software and growing into a network of the same ilk, what it can send without interference we can't even grasp yet. Even if you don't like another person, or their religious beliefs, bitcoin doesn't care. I lived through 9/11, my friends died in war.

But even I don't want Bitcoin just for the people I am more likely to have similarities too. And in working with the @_Devcoin guys for a few years now, officially since 2020 - I realized people from all spots on this globe and I share much more in common than everyday Americans.

And I haven't turned my back or spurned Americans either. I'm just saying we need to change our mindset. We want things but we won't admit it takes a whole world to pull off what it is we seek. The media is to blame for this but I also think we're at the point for grownups to act

To see how the innovation economy has left much of the US behind, we traveled to the small town of Bryan, in northwestern Ohio's Williams County. This is a thread about how to fix what the innovation economy broke about America.

This is Valerie. She’s 46 and has worked all her life—three jobs currently—yet she has just $65 in her checking account. Her husband works full time at a metal fastener plant.

Altogether, after health insurance premiums but before taxes, Valerie and her husband make about $45,000 a year.

The story of her working life is also the story of Bryan. The town is broken in some of the same ways that much of the rest of the country is broken. Understanding what broke Bryan is crucial to understanding how it might be fixed.

For decades, America’s political and business leaders acted as if places like Bryan didn’t matter.

Lots of requests for a "step-by-step" guide to where we are with the EU-UK negotiations.

So here you go - short thread summarising the essential context & key points / issues:

1) UK formally left EU in January 2020 but entered a "transition period" during which nothing very much changed: meant to give time for negotiations over future EU-UK relationship in fields like trade and security; based on "Political Declaration" as agreed by Johnson Government

2) Political Declaration envisaged only distant EU-UK relationship: partly logical consequence of Theresa May's longstanding "red lines" on free movement etc; but also result of renewed political preference, by Johnson Government, for even more extreme "clean break Brexit"

3) But almost immediately after UK withdrawal, Johnson Government changed the goalposts in ways that can only be described as cynical, untrustworthy and reckless. Started by tearing up large parts of Political Declaration: even its distant ties were no longer distant enough...

4) ... & continued with new red lines / fresh demands reflecting Johnson's (frankly tedious) belief that UK should "have its cake and eat it". So: back to square one - yet UK refused extension to transition period, to give more time for negotiations - even after onset of pandemic

Here @playbookplus goes again: ‘HOW MUCH IS BIPARTISANSHIP WORTH?’ I don't know @politico, how many more months would you like the pandemic to drag on for? How many more dead? How many more people, businesses ruined economically? I'm sorry but this is garbage framing in a crisis.

Oh but this is what powerful people are talking about in DC! Might that point itself be examined with more seriousness than taking this BS at face value? Don't you understand, we just reflect back what people are saying? We are mirrors on the world, we offer no commentary.

If "very serious people" are talking about what "nice number" would be $1.3T, 1.2T and not what we need to get out of this mess, might it be worth saying, perhaps, this conversation w/o reference to epidemiologic or economic reality is just a failure of leadership, governance?

"if you demand more pay, we will replace you with robots" is not a reason to pay people less than it costs them to work for you, it is a reason to have your corporation taken over by the state, or dismantle an unwilling state and rebuild one that does.

corporations and governments are out here accelerating your deaths so they can monetize your remains while some of you assholes go "well $15 is too much"

$15 was insufficient 20 years ago, and it's insufficient now. pay people enough to feed their babies or they will kill you.

if people have nothing left to lose they will act like people with nothing left to lose

i cannot make it clearer than this

capitalism only "works" if you have enough police per so many thousand desperately poor individuals.

capitalism only "works" if you employ enough human beings to be the face of your blatant exploitation.

go ahead and automate and watch how fast people sabotage your shit.

if your government does not keep you fed, healthy, and safe, it has no reason to exist.

government - leadership of any kind, tbh - only exists to centralise the management of common needs, so we don't all have to individually scrabble to survive every day, on our own.