Recent kwiples

Tuesday 7th of May 2024

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The arts Subsidies to poets would make for faster increases in human welfare than more billions for CERN or the space program. Dierdre Nansen McCloskey, Bettering Humanomics  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say The woke class wants to teach kids to hate each other, rather than teaching them how to read. Ron DeSantis, strawman argument against teaching children about America's encounter with racism © 2021 Kwiple.com
Cocks of the walk say I do not want your opinion. I want an audience. Otto Warburg, summononing another scientist to come to Berlin and listen to him talk about his latest theory © 2021 Kwiple.com
Cocks of the walk say It's about time. Otto Warburg, on being told he was awarded the 1931 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine © 2021 Kwiple.com
Congress Some people think, Congress? You mean we should ask Congress to do something that may be politically hard because a relatively small, intense minority doesn't like it? Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. Elizabeth Warren, Persist © 2021 Kwiple.com
< Death threats One email, sent on Jan. 2 to officials in nearly a dozen counties, threatened to bomb polling sites: “No one at these places will be spared unless and until Trump is guaranteed to be POTUS again.” Reuters, June 11, 2021, in an article about Georgia entitled: “Trump-inspired death threats are terrorizing election workers” © 2021 Kwiple.com
< Death threats “You actually deserve to hang by your goddamn, soy boy, skinny-ass neck,” said a woman in one voicemail, to Richard Barron, director of elections for Fulton County, GA. Reuters, June 11, 2021, in an article about Georgia entitled: “Trump-inspired death threats are terrorizing election workers” © 2021 Kwiple.com
Democracy [T]he history of modern democracy, in the United States and many other parts of the world, including much of Europe and Latin America, has been riven with a constant tension between the rule of expert truth, on the one hand, and the rule of majority instincts on the other. But too much of either in isolation — elite knowledge or popular consensus, without the corrective of the other — constitutes a danger to the whole edifice. Sophia Rosenfeld, Democracy and Truth © 2021 Kwiple.com
Drugs I'll die young, but it's like kissing God. Lenny Bruce on his heroin addiction © 2021 Kwiple.com
Equality I am sure there was no man born marked of God above another; for none comes into the world with a saddle on his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him. Richard Rumbold, “Speech from the Scaffold” [1685] © 2021 Kwiple.com
Food for thought Most people need their heads to be filled with thoughts. You are not going to feed people with some highly intellectual discourse. Most people eat simple foods.  Not the kind of food we are having tonight. Generally most people consume very simple-meaning beliefs. This is normal. There is haute cuisine, and there is McDonald's. Everyone takes advantage of such people all over the world. Vladislav Surkov, during an interview with Henry Foy, Financial Times, June 18, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Freedom An overdose of freedom is lethal to the state. Anything that is medicine can be poison. It is all about the dosage. Vladislav Surkov, founding father of Putinism, architect of Russia's “sovereign democracy” © 2021 Kwiple.com
Freedom There are two options. The first is Anglo-Saxon. I give you the menu, you can choose what you want. The second option is Russian. There is no choice. The chef chooses for you, because he knows better what you want. I suggest the Russian option. Vladislav Surkov, founding father of Putinism, architect of Russia's “sovereign democracy” © 2021 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Count votes in Congress by: 1. Calculating a Member's Proportional Vote (MPV) for each member, as follows: MPV = SPNP / NLRS where: SPNP = State's Percentage of the National Population NLRS = Number of Legislators Representing the State (in that legislature) 2. Totaling “yes” MPVs and “no” MPVs 3. Passing if total MPV is more than 50 OTHERWISE Abolish the Senate © 2019 Kwiple.com
Meritocracy After seven decades of meritocracy, it's as unlikely for a lower-class child to be admitted to a top Ivy League university as it was in 1954. George Packer, Last Best Hope  [2021] © 2021 Kwiple.com
Money in politics Over the past decade, just ten people — ten donors and their spouses — have injected more than $1.1 billion into super PACs and other organizations that support their favored candidates. Ten families have a voice in Washington that drowns out millions of families who also need government on their side. Elizabeth Warren, Persist © 2021 Kwiple.com
Post-2020 Senate shituation 15 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming) 2020 population: 40,085,414 Senators: 30 Republicans 1 Senator per 1,336,180 people — 1 state (California) 2020 population: 39,368,075 Senators: 2 Democrats 1 Senator per 19,684,037 people 19,684,037 / 1,336,180 = 14.7, therefore: average 15er's vote is worth nearly 15 times a Californian's, a Californian's vote is worth less than 7% of an average 15er's — 1 state (Wyoming) 2020 population = 582,328, therefore: 1 Senator per 291,164 Wyomians, a Wyomian's vote is worth 68 times a Californian's, a Californian's vote is worth 1.5% of a Wyomian's  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Criticism seeks to engage in conversations and identify error; canceling seeks to stigmatize conversations and punish the errant. Criticism cares whether statements are true; canceling cares about their social effects. Jonathan Rauch, The Constitution of Knowledge © 2021 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say I would have to follow up with you on that one, Mr. Gohmert. Jennifer Eberlien, associate deputy chief of the Forest Service, responding, with a smile, to Louie Gohmert, who asked her, during a meeting about climate change conducted by the House Natural Resources Committee: “Is there anything that the National Forest Service or BLM can do to change the course of the moon's orbit or the Earth's orbit around the sun? Obviously, that would have profound effects on our climate.” © 2021 Kwiple.com
Sex “In this third season of Harley Quinn, we had a moment where Batman was going down on Catwoman,” Justin Halpern said. “And DC [Comics] was like, ‘You can’t do that. You absolutely cannot do that.’ They're like, ‘Heroes don't do that.’” Continued Halpern: “So, we said, ‘Are you saying heroes are just selfish lovers?’ They were like, ‘No, it's that we sell consumer toys for heroes. It's hard t sell a toy if Batman is also going down on someone.’” Hollywood Reporter, June 15, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union [W]e do seem to be in a period of particular turmoil in which a resurgent populism in certain sectors is on a long- term collision course with many decades, if not centuries, of efforts to shore up policy-making based on technical knowledge designed by and for elites, with division rather than compromise the goal among their respective partisans. (This may also be one way that long- standing class-based and racial conflict get expressed in the twenty-first century.) Sophia Rosenfeld, Democracy and Truth © 2021 Kwiple.com
Taxes There is nothing built into the economy that says you can't tax unrealised capital gains. It's not an immutable law of economics, it's a deliberate policy choice, a choice that, based on the explosion of inequality in the US in recent decades, appears to be a pretty bad one. Wealthy investors like me, a former Wall Street executive, simply should not be allowed to pick and choose when we want to pay taxes on our investments. Morris Pearl, Financial Times, June 14, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Taxes To capture the financial reality of the richest Americans, ProPublica undertook an analysis that has never been done before. We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same period. We're going to call this their true tax rate. The results are stark. According to Forbes, those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That's a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%. ProPublica, June 8, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Taxes Today, the top one-tenth of one percent in America pay total taxes of about 3.2 percent of their net worth every year. Meanwhile, the 99.9 percent pay about 7.2 percent. Think about that: Collectively, all those teachers and waitresses and factory workers and computer programmers and small businesss owners are paying total taxes at more than double the rate of the thinnest slice at the top. For the four hundred richest households in America, the numbers are even more obscene. They pay taxes at a lower rate than any other group — including the poorest 10 percent of all Americans. Elizabeth Warren, Persist  [2021] © 2021 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality According to Knight Frank [the global property consultancy], the threshold to join Monaco's wealthiest 1 per cent is $7.9m, the highest in the world; second-placed Switzerland has a threshold of $5.1m. … In the next four years,  the number of people worth $30m or more will have grown by 141,055, collectively worth more than $4.23tn, according to Knight Frank. Financial Times, May 27, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Economic disparities are also growing by race. In 1963, median family wealth was $43,000 higher for whites than for African Americans. By 2013, it was $123,000 higher (and $120,000 higher than for Hispanics, for whom there isn't data from 1963). Even in the few years since the financial crash, wealth inequality has grown along racial lines. Ganesh Sitaraman, The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution © 2021 Kwiple.com
 
Wealth inequality Right now, the top 10 per cent of households in the US own 87 per cent of equities. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, May 30, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com