AI isn't really my thing. But inflation is.
And it seems like, even if AI is long-term disinflationary (higher productivity, abundance, peace and good feelings) actually building it could be quite another matter.
Alistair Burt in 1990
omg baby Alistair Burt
On a windy day, butterflies really are the most ridiculous creatures. They can't seem to get anywhere!
Everyone who makes a restaurant booking secretly yearns to eat half an hour earlier.
So you made a reservation for 8pm? You actually wanted to eat at 7.30pm etc.
TL;DR I think 'Deflationary Spiral' would be an ace name for a glam rock band.
Fun fact: those labour-intensive, low-productivity sectors also tend to provide essential services, often paid for in full or in part by cash-strapped governments.
Then there's the Baumol's cost disease problem. Even if we see a dramatic increase in goods and services, and inflation becomes a quaint concern, like the balance of payments in the 1970s, those pesky violinists/nurses/teachers in less productive sectors will still demand to be paid more!
Like most new technologies*, the productivity gains will take longer to materialise than the upfront investments (data centres, energy infrastructure, high-end chips, high-end talent etc.)
* see computer, the
Like the US oil shale boom, China's ascension to the WTO or cheap solar, AI could be one of those lesser-spotted positive supply shocks. Lower inflation and interest rate cuts for all!
AI isn't really my thing. But inflation is.
And it seems like, even if AI is long-term disinflationary (higher productivity, abundance, peace and good feelings) actually building it could be quite another matter.
Could you turn it down, please?
Restaurant music is the moral panic our age deserves. My harrowing Saturday night at the neighbourhood pizzeria.
“The appointment of Peter Mandelson, desired by Downing Street."
"Anti-Zionism isn't antisemitism but also firebombing synagogues is anti-Zionism. I am smart."
Ad infinitum
There are several reasons for this silence. Understandings of racism have changed to focus exclusively on people of colour, so antisemitism, even where it is regretted or condemned, is not seen as ‘real’ racism, and Jews are seen as white, wealthy, powerful and integrated - so not needing or deserving anti-racist solidarity. When much of the anti-racist left looks around society and puts people into different boxes, the Jewish community doesn’t make it into the box marked ‘our people’. Some people mean well but just don’t get it, and need to re-learn what antisemitism is all about. But beyond that, there is a deeper, more troubling reason: there are large parts of the so-called anti-racist left that accommodate and encourage exactly the hateful, violent extremism that is fuelling this rising tide of antisemitism. Call for death in this movement and you become a celebrity. Claim that the UK is under “Zionist control” and nobody bats an eyelid. Solidarity statements flood in for people who rant about “Jewish supremacy”, rather than for the Jews they are inciting hatred against. And all driven by an obsessive, violent hatred for Israel, and a purifying desire to denounce and destroy anyone and anything touched by the sin of “Zionism”. Of course this generates antisemitism. How could it not? And of course, the people pushing this hatred, marching alongside it, or saying nothing when the people on the same platform as them express these views, cannot mount a campaign against antisemitism even when synagogues are being fire-bombed. How could they? They can’t even begin to acknowledge why this antisemitism is happening, because to do so would be to incriminate their own political world. So instead, they do nothing.
If Israel stood accused of paying local criminals to fire-bomb British mosques in the name of an extreme Zionist group, there would be emergency protests in our city centres demanding action. But when it’s an Iranian-linked group claiming responsibility for petrol-bombing synagogues? Instead of solidarity we get ‘false flag’ conspiracy theories that it’s really Mossad doing the attacks. We shouldn’t be surprised by this: when far right mobs attacked asylum hotels two summers ago, the anti-fascist response was peppered with people claiming that “Zionists” were the puppet masters behind the scenes, pulling the rioters’ strings. This is how politically deformed parts of the left have become, a grotesque parody of the true anti-racist solidarity that previous generations showed Jewish communities. It emerged last month that one in five students said they don’t want to share a house with a Jew. If one in five students said they didn’t want to share their house with a black student, you can bet that every Stand Up To Racism branch in the country would be campaigning against it. But when it’s Jews? Forget it.
"And the response to this from Britain’s anti-racist movement, that regularly claims to mobilise tens of thousands to march against racism? Zilch. Nothing. No campaigns, no solidarity vigils, maybe a tweet or two, but beyond that? Silence." — @daverich1.bsky.social
Weldon taking a beating in the futures market atm.
Then they slap you with the the higher APD rate which means, from an Exchequer perspective, it's at minimum revenue neutral.
Dunno where else you would put it, but still find it funny there is a specific section on airmiles in the ministerial code
BA Club World
That's a leisure destination, Duncan! You want to fly a child on the old yin-yang eight across business class? You monster.
Valuing an Avios at 1p, this is presumably a tremendous waste of public money, no?
TL;DR I asked the waitress to turn it down and she happily did and then my husband and I used the quiet to show each other pictures of our dog.
Have I ever mentioned that one reason food on an aeroplane tastes so meh isn't just the altitude and humidity, but the noise, which dulls sweetness and can even *mask crunchiness*.
You know how it is. You really don’t want to be that guy. Come on now, you’re in public, an image of urban anonymity, you could be anyone tonight. An unflappable companion to your spouse, a charming stranger to the waitress, an adventurous, blithesome, verging on the… COULD YOU TURN THAT MUSIC DOWN PLEASE I CAN BARELY HEAR MYSELF THINK. THANK YOU. Hi. This was me on Saturday. As I sat down at the local pizzeria, my forehead instantly began to contort. That sound. Cloying, preposterously folksy, presumably Italian music emanating from a set of speakers that, like a rotary hammer, can still be felt long after you are gone. You don’t so much hear it as experience it spatially. You look at each other. Should we just leave? But you’re hungry. It’s 8pm and lunch is a distant memory. Imperceptibly, you shrug those pathetic shoulders and meditate over your personal shortcomings. That over-reliance on noise-cancelling headphones. Or the fact that you never play any music at home on loud, even when hosting a dinner party. I think it might be a class thing. Like removing the Viennetta from the freezer and casually declaring to Bob and Barbara: “You know what? I just don’t trust that Neil Kinnock.”
Yes I know I look ridiculous but what's actually bothering me is I just noticed that lampshade is wonky.
Could you turn it down, please?
Restaurant music is the moral panic our age deserves. My harrowing Saturday night at the neighbourhood pizzeria.
You don't *have* to also block @auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social but apparently
Whoa you sure get blocked a lot on this site when you post stuff like setting fire to synagogues is bad.
