who's his lawyer?
it's not that bad, esp considering how mid upgrades 4060 and 5050 are.
The people on Twitter, even those living in Venezuela mainly represent the top 10-20% income percentiles. I'm not sure how unpopular Maduro is among the majority working class, but Twitter attracts the better off esp in the Global South.
"Multiple images seems to show a big screen where they've searched "venezuela" on X."
It pays like $2000/game pizza unlike irl
article for free
Bulgaria became the 21st member of the Eurozone on Thursday, completing a long-sought step in its European integration despite years of political instability and pro-Russian campaigning against the move.
Sofia has failed to form a stable government for nearly five years. Large protests in November led to the collapse of the latest cabinet and raised the prospect of an eighth election in as many years. Allegations of corruption and mismanagement, the absence of a 2026 budget and sustained fear-mongering by pro-Russian forces have all tainted the moment of euro adoption.
“I warmly welcome Bulgaria to the euro family,” said European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde.
“The euro is a powerful symbol of what Europe can achieve when we work together, and of the shared values and collective strength that we can leverage to confront the global geopolitical uncertainty that we face at the moment.”
What might otherwise have been a celebration of European values has proved more divisive in the Balkan country. Support for the euro stands at about 40 per cent, while opposition exceeds half the population, according to two Eurobarometer surveys conducted in 2025.
Public scepticism is driven in part by fears that retailers will round up prices during the currency conversion, as occurred in other countries after euro entry. The prolonged absence of a stable government has also undermined official efforts to defend the changeover.
Disinformation watchdogs say opposition has been amplified by a sustained campaign from pro-Russian political forces and co-ordinated messaging on social media. Parties such as the far-right Revival, along with Bulgaria’s pro-Russian president Rumen Radev, have called for a referendum on the euro.
Anti-euro activism has been led chiefly by Revival, which has organised protests across Bulgaria, some featuring Russian flags and clashes with police outside EU institutions. During one demonstration in Sofia, supporters attempted to set fire to part of the European Commission’s delegation, chanting slogans such as “No to the euro” and “We want to keep the lev”. The messaging centres on claims that joining the euro would erode national sovereignty, undermine Bulgarian identity and benefit political elites.
Goran Georgiev, an expert on Russian disinformation at the Centre for the Study of Democracy in Sofia, points to a “decades-long push by the Kremlin and its proxies to block Bulgaria’s accession first to the EU and Nato, and later to Schengen and the Eurozone.
“Bulgaria’s euro-Atlantic integration succeeded despite this, and despite systemic problems such as corruption and the lack of an independent justice system,” he said. “The reforms pledged at EU accession in 2007 are still the ones the country struggles to deliver.”
Outgoing prime minister Rosen Zhelyazkov acknowledged “challenges” ahead but said the euro would have a “long-term positive effect” on the economy. Bulgaria’s inflation rate of 5.2 per cent in November “had nothing to do with the euro”, he added.
The switch from the lev to the euro is expected to have limited immediate economic impact, as the national currency has been pegged to the Deutsche mark and later the euro since the 1990s to guard against hyperinflation.
Eurozone membership, however, gives Bulgaria a seat on the European Central Bank’s governing council for the first time, granting it a direct voice in monetary policy.
Now Bulgaria is locked in, no more option to break the currency board.
Don't like what Troika did to Greece and PIIGS? You are spreading pro-Russia propaganda.
You don't like that Eurozone member country debt have credit risk and are closer to American states than actual countries? Russian propagandist.
Who are you voting For? ("V24 is giving out our 1st annual Anti-Western Activist of the Year Award")
Very funny how 
gets into every one of these lists.
Yep, they don't want to call it inflation but it kind of is. Neoliberals fear mongering about Govt spending when private sector is spending recklessly with no concern for rest of the economy.
This is just like that GTA V heist 
fr doe I hope they get away.
Got a used Apple Watch 8, pretty good for heart rate tracking. The line going up and circles filling up does make me want to exercise. 
In Shreve, Crump & Low, a jewellery store in Greenwich, Connecticut, a Laurent Ferrier “Grand Sport Tourbillon” watch can set you back as much as $210,000. Business is brisk.
“We’re very blessed in Greenwich,” said managing partner Bradford Walker. The Swiss luxury watches, natural diamonds, sapphires and emeralds the shop specialises in are all selling well. “Demand has actually increased over the past six months.”
In the city of Bridgeport, a 30-minute drive away, demand is also rising — but for a different kind of product. People here are flocking to the city’s food pantries and soup kitchens as the high cost of living bears down on lower-income families.
“I’m living day by day,” said Jamaica-born Roselyn Macdonald, as she picked up eggs from a food bank in The Hollow, a poor immigrant neighbourhood of Bridgeport. Macdonald is unemployed and struggling to pay her bills.
‘We’re very blessed in Greenwich,’ says Bradford Walker, managing partner of a jewellery store © Pascal Perich/FT
Volunteers prepare food for people in need in Bridgeport © Pascal Perich/FT
This is the tale of two cities — a pair of communities just 30 miles apart that have experienced such contrasting fortunes they could be in different countries.
Together, they symbolise America’s K-shaped economy — a split screen where asset-owning classes have become ever wealthier while lower-income households have seen their living standards stagnate or decline.
This bifurcation has pushed the issue of affordability to the top of the US political agenda, threatening the Republican party’s prospects in next year’s midterm elections and weighing on Donald Trump’s presidency.
Fairfield County, where Greenwich and Bridgeport are situated, is one of the most K-shaped regions in America. In Greenwich, home to hedge funds including AQR, Viking Global Investors and Lone Pine Capital, the average gross income per tax return was $687,000 in 2023. In Bridgeport it was a tenth of that — just $70,500.
In Greenwich, the average gross income per tax return was $687,000 in 2023 © Pascal Perich/FT
Those disparities have got worse in recent years. “The gap is widening, not narrowing,” said David Rabin, head of Greenwich United Way, a local non-profit organisation.
The Republicans’ signature legislative achievement this year, the “big beautiful bill”, has in some cases made families’ situations worse. The legislation, which Trump signed in July, has delivered tax cuts for the rich while reducing federal funding for Medicaid, the taxpayer-funded health insurance programme for low-income Americans, and food stamps known as Snap.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan agency, households in the bottom decile of income distribution will lose about $1,600 per year as a result of the law, while those in the top 10 per cent will see a $12,000 annual gain.
National surveys underscore the divergence. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index shows that people with investment portfolios feel significantly better about the economy than those who do not own stocks, with sentiment among non-stockholders sinking to its lowest point since the university began collecting such data in 1998.
This split is on show in Fairfield County. In Greenwich and other rich enclaves such as Darien and New Canaan, “people’s net worth and wealth has been increasing as home prices and the stock market have gone up”, said Mark Abraham, head of DataHaven, a Connecticut-based non-profit research organisation that studies social trends and public data.
“But the majority, people who are just starting out in their career or don’t own a home or don’t have a stock portfolio, they’re kind of treading water,” Abraham added.
Mendi Blue Paca, head of Fairfield County’s Communities Foundation, which awards grants to local charities, said chronic homelessness had been virtually eliminated in the area about six years ago, but since the coronavirus pandemic it had been “going gangbusters”.
“The shelters are overflowing, the pantries are overwhelmed,” she said. “And it’s not just people below the poverty line showing up for handouts — it’s the working poor, as well, who are now food insecure.”
With its waterside mansions, private beaches and Lamborghini dealerships, Greenwich — where the median sale price for a single-family home rose to $3.5mn in July from $3.1mn the previous year — is largely insulated from such problems.
The town has benefited from a stock market that hit near record highs this year: the HFRI fund-weighted composite index, a barometer of the global hedge fund industry’s health, was up more than 11 per cent by November, close to its best performance since 2016.
“There are lots of people making lots of money,” said Bruce McGuire, head of the Connecticut Hedge Fund Association. “The shops and restaurants up and down Greenwich Avenue all seem to be doing very well.”
But even in Greenwich, where 9 per cent of people live below the federal poverty line, the stresses are growing. Rabin said low- and middle-income families often struggled to come up with the $151,000 a year needed for rent, food and child care in the town. “Almost a third of the population here are one missed pay cheque away from disaster,” he said.
Rabin also noted that as a result of Trump’s tax and spending bill, about a quarter of the 850 people in Greenwich who usually receive food stamps were no longer eligible for them.
In Bridgeport, the effect of the bill will be far greater. A large share of the population depends on Snap and Medicaid, said Rhonda Neal, head of Bridgeport Rescue Mission, a charity. “If you cut [them], you’re affecting the working poor, the elderly and kids.”
Lunch is served at the Thomas Merton Center in Bridgeport © Pascal Perich/FT
The increased need is obvious at the Thomas Merton Family Center in Bridgeport, where a soup kitchen doles out plates of meatballs and pasta to a snaking queue of single men and married couples.
“Every day we have new faces coming here,” said the head chef, Kelemen. Four years ago, 125-150 people showed up for lunch: “Now it’s 200-250.”
Juan Cardona is a typical guest, a homeless ex-convict who lives in a tent. “Bridgeport is rough,” he said. “But the only way is up.”
Trump has described “affordability” as the “greatest con job”. But he has also stressed his administration is working hard to lower prices. In a speech from the White House on December 17, he blamed the high cost of living on his predecessor, Joe Biden, and claimed that inflation was being “crushed”.
People in Bridgeport are unconvinced. “Trump is the biggest liar,” said Robert Walsh, a homeless man who works as a pantry co-ordinator at the Thomas Merton Family Center. “He said he was going to bring prices down on his first day in office. Instead they’ve gone way up.”
9
Trump’s “best is yet to come” and the data reality are diverging – for the worse!
(billmitchell.org)
2026 Recession year? 
https://x.com/sopjap/status/1996123471265587535
He do be looking drippy though
Twitter 
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https://x.com/SaulStaniforth/status/2008078072231448679
Meanwhile the USSR: