Make no mistake, at the end of the day we lost $27 billion, 25K-40K jobs and a blow to our reputation of being ‘open for business.’ The union that opposed the project gained nothing and cost other union members 11K good, high-paying jobs. The local politicians that catered to the hyper-political opposition hurt their own government colleagues and the economic interest of every constituent in their district. The true local residents who actually supported the project and its benefits for their community are badly hurt. Nothing was gained and much was lost. This should never happen again.
Tag: politics
Belt and Road
China’s Belt and Road Initiative is the most ambitious infrastructure investment effort in history. But is it also a plan to remake the global balance of power?
2023-10-02: Belt and Road is a giant failure
That’s just a mind-bogglingly bad long-term strategy for achieving global leadership. China’s leaders tout their country as the leader of the Global South, but they’re raiding developing countries like their own personal piggy bank. Throughout the whole saga of the Belt and Road, China’s government treated countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Zambia like Chinese provinces — assuming they could and would strongarm their populations into supporting new infrastructure, prioritizing economic throughput over efficiency and profitability, and counting on those other countries to take the hit when the projects went…er…south.
Tribal Politics
He could get people to change their position on welfare, 100%, all the way to the other side of the spectrum of policy, just based on what party they were told supported that position. After they said they supported that position, he asked them why they supported that position, and they didn’t say, ‘Because my party does.’ They came up with other reasons. So, after being experimentally induced into holding a position that they actually didn’t agree with, they then came up with reasons that they thought they agreed with that.
Pope vs Pope
this stole some plot lines from the young pope
When he retired, the ultra-conservative Pope Benedict XVI was expected to disappear from view, clearing the way for his liberal successor, Francis, to clean house in the notoriously corrupt Vatican. Instead, he stayed, setting the stage for a de-stabilizing brawl over morality, theology, and the Church’s horrific legacy of sexual abuse.
The Rock will become President
Robin Sloan has a charming new short story that imagines how Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson will become President, first by playing the role in an imaginary movie. Along the way, there are some poignant thoughts about the nature of our political imaginations, the role of new media like Instagram in shaping public perception, and the ways leadership can, spell-like, be brought into being. Can you imagine him on the debate stage? The way he’ll look alongside his opponents in the primary? A line of normal, rumpled humans, and then this towering figure. A political revolution: his suit will fit.
Warning From Europe
Polarization. Conspiracy theories. Attacks on the free press. An obsession with loyalty. Recent events in the United States follow a pattern Europeans know all too well.
Politics of Homeownership
Homeowners participate more vigorously in politics, and their self-interested political posture does not just limit the ability of cities to build more and achieve greater density, it contributes to broader political and economic inequality.
Neuropolitics
Does measuring people’s spontaneous reactions to a TV ad or a stump speech tell you how they will ultimately vote, however? “On the applied side, it’s pretty unclear, the hype from the reality. It’s easy to over-believe the ability of these tools.” So far cognitive tests have had mixed results. Contrasting studies have shown that implicit attitudes both do and don’t predict how people vote. Democracy assumes the presence of rational actors, capable of digesting information from all quarters and coming to reasoned conclusions. If neuroconsultants are even 50% as good as they claim at probing people’s innermost thoughts and shifting their voting intentions, it calls that assumption into question.
Owning elections
Last week at DEFCON 26 in Las Vegas, 11-year-old Emmett Brewer hacked into a replica of Florida’s state election site and changed the voting results. That’s scary enough. What’s even scarier is that it took him less than 10 minutes. An 11-year-old girl was able to hack into the same site in ~15 minutes. And more than 30 kids were able to hack into replicas of other states’ sites in less than 30 min.
Information warfare attack
As DHS, DNI, FBI, and the Pentagon come together before the public to say Russia is actively attacking our midterm elections, as we have long been warned they’d do, please remember that exactly 2.5 weeks ago Donald Trump stood next to Russian President Vladimir Putin, refused to confront him on the 2016 infowar campaign our intelligence officials all say happened, and called Putin’s denial of the 2016 infowar “strong and powerful.”
Seeing all the intel chiefs on stage say one thing, and knowing the President — who wasn’t there? — believes another was weird.
All of the directors seemed to be saying they believe the nature of the attacks was overwhelmingly psyops, or online campaigns intended to influence opinion and voting choices, rather than direct attacks on voting infrastructure.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 