Richard Switzer

Some cities it's just not worth fucking with

This stat stopped me dead in my tracks. Facebook makes more ad revenue off of scams (that Facebook internally admits and acknowledges are scams!) than the GDP of 72 of the world's nations.

The Globe is correct about the narrow point but missing the bigger one. The province's February OSAP cuts, which took hundreds of millions of dollars from mostly public university and college students, were a smokescreen to protect malfeasant private colleges. THAT'S the scandal.

Seizing even a tiny fraction of this and redistributing it back to people so they can enjoy lower energy bills and lower cost of living would be pretty popular www.theguardian.com/business/ng-...

Sports gambling is a cancer on sports & a cancer on fans. Millions of victims and their families know this. Ask yourself who actually benefits from its existence? cc: @davebidini.bsky.social

22 California billionaires have spent a combined $150 million so far to defeat Prop 40. By spending their fortunes trying to stop California from taxing billionaires, they're making the argument for a billionaire wealth tax more clearly and articulately than anyone else possibly could.

Exactly right. Batteries don’t just smooth out delivery, they provide the path to grid resilience and reduce the need for massive investments on an aging grid. Also, a lot of us have a 50-80kWh battery parked in the driveway most of the time.

You might think there’s not much you can do to stop billionaires. But you can delete your Twitter account, and push to make remaining on the platform (for businesses and politicians in particular) socially and morally unacceptable. Posting = supporting Musk, straight up.

New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854

"We don't want to turn into a banana republic, so we won't try to rein in corporations" is the kind of thing you say if you don't know what makes a banana republic a banana republic, and instead want to be a banana republic where the bananas are data centers.

Let’s hope we hear a lot more about Attribution Science in the next few years. Massive companies have externalized the cost of their harms to people in the planet for nearly a century through lobbying and propaganda. Their time is up. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/10/06/o...

That’s @anandwrites.bsky.social right there.

A Haitian man legally immigrated to Ohio, then was given an ankle monitor bc Trump withdrew his status. He threw himself in front of truck. The trucker, who voted for Trump, is haunted. “Pierre was doing what he was supposed to do. We did not do right by him.” www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

I think it is crucial for the health of the Democratic party that the entire consultant class from previous administrations, including and especially Clinton, be told to go home and stop bothering people. They are wrong about everything and have been holding the party back for decades.

Seems like some version of this runs every day

👀

Music brings me so much joy. Last night saw these goofballs at Massey Hall and today a friend sent a link to a new double-length album from The Drin: open.spotify.com/album/7hX3zk...

Standard regulatory capture playbook: Step one: Major fear mongering campaign. AI must be regulated! Step two: Who besides us massively overleveraged AI companies could possibly write the regulations??? Step three: Regulations shut out new entrants and open-source competitors.

Finally found a product category Wirecutter doesn’t have any reviews on.

Wow. I hadn’t realised how much LLMs had killed StackOverflow (the site where coders traditionally go to ask questions when they’re stuck): “Just before the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, there were more than 100,000 monthly questions asked on the site; last month, there were fewer than 1,500.”

The White House Press Corps should've walked out as soon as the Trump regime banned the Associated Press for calling the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of Mexico." That was Feb 15, 2025. The first month of Trump Term II. Not surprising that abandoning principles for weak acquiescence led to more abuse.

Senior CNBC econ reporter @steveliesman.bsky.social: “Insanity is not a strategy”

When you use framing / communications tactics to re-frame presentation away from your true intentions, that re-framing starts to creep into your soul and your mind; backwards-infecting your ideology. So: renewable deployment *actually* stops being about climate. Fossil phase-out stops mattering.

There is no “AI exemption”.

Ossoff: "While the world burns & you pay more for everything, your tax dollars become royal family's wealth. Bc it pays to be a Trump, especially when the whole world knows daddy's a crook. Half a billion from the Emirati spy chief... the Mar-a-Lago mafia really has taken corruption to new heights"

Abdul El-Sayed: "Weijia, with all due respect, this is the third time you've asked about a Twitch streamer ... their whole game is to make us fight culture wars so that we don't pay attention to the fact the president has made $2.2 billion ... "

Exactly. "Sandbox" my arse. It's only the public and media's ignorance about how all things computer actually work that prevents the AI industry's mix of incompetence, Machiavellian profiteering, and techbro fanboy fantasy-think being obvious.

As usual, @doctorow.pluralistic.net provides a rational, oddly reassuring counterpoint to the broadly irrational coverage of this “incident”. Also the point that OpenAI quietly feeding the Skynet narrative helps them raise more investment is such a sign of the deeply weird times we are living in.

✅ A prescription for food and housing w/ Jeff Yoo MD and Andrew Boozary MD h/t @uhn.ca #FridayFlex

We’ve been over this before: Every Global 7500 that Bombardier builds in 🇨🇦 has 2 GE engines built in Indiana, 🇺🇸. Every Challenger that Bombardier builds in 🇨🇦 has 2 Honeywell engines built in Arizona. 🇺🇸. Bombardier employs 3,000+ 🇺🇸s & has 2,800 🇺🇸 suppliers. Not so smart.

Struggle to think of political writing in 2026 that can outdo this epic piece by Jan Gerson open.substack.com/pub/theline/...

Olivia Rodrigo: -planned successful all women music festival -raised 10 million for women’s charities -pro Palestine, anti ICE -is 23 years old Young woman pop stars can use their voices and platforms for change, if they want to.

@jimbostanford.bsky.social Wrote a short thread here inspired by your CBC radio appearance a few weeks back. Includes Australia’s foray into LNG exports. which I’m sure you’re well aware of. bsky.app/profile/rswi...

This attempt to demonize Piker & then hang him around the neck of every Dem could not conceivably be more transparent. It's very, very obvious what they're doing. And yet everyone is just dutifully playing their role. The cycle unfolds the same way it has dozens & dozens of times before.

Quiet energy revolutions are happening every day with new, post-fossil technologies gaining huge popularity & uptake far faster than our pokey governments can hinder them. Plug-In or Balcony Solar makes it easier for ANYBODY to harness the power of the sun. www.podcastics.com/episode/4282...

Canada's largest ice cream company used to source its fruits and nuts from U.S. suppliers — some for over 30 YEARS. Then, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on Canadian products. So, what did Chapman's do? They called Italy. They called Spain. They signed multi-year contracts with European suppliers.

Every time a right winger points and laughs at a socialist who was born rich, it should be understood as a desperate attempt to justify their own moral failure to themselves. If you grew up rich and are now a leftist and someone points that out, the proper response is: “Yes I am. Why aren’t you?”