That happened at my university, though not to someone affiliated with the university. He was trying to break up a fight. He had a gun and it fell out its holster. He was grabbing for it as campus police were shouting not to. They shot and killed him. While you can argue about whether the police response and training was appropriate, one thing is definitely true. If he had not had a gun on him that day, he would not have been killed. A country awash in guns is not a better country, despite what the "a well armed society is a polite society" people claim.

This truly is the strangest timeline, where Serious Journalists write about rumors of JD Vance having sex with a couch.

Car prices: supply is constrained because of supply chain issues where often just a small handful of the myriad of chips in the car are unavailable.

Housing: supply is artificially constrained by various laws, often of the NIMBY type.

So I started actually looking up numbers and they indeed look good from certain sources, but I'm still giving them the side eye. For instance, the CDC shows Mississippi as having the #1 murder rate among the states in 2022.

There is the Logan Act, but he likely would not be prosecuted under it, let alone convicted. From Wikipedia:

Only two people have ever been indicted on charges of violating the Act, one in 1802 and the other in 1852. Neither was convicted.

The Logan Act gets talked about much more than it has ever been used. There's also a debate as to whether the Logan Act is even unconstitutional.

Legistics?

Depreciation of assets are tax write-offs, I think.

What does that even look like as a business model, though? There's an expectation now that you don't pay for web browsers. What would a standalone Chrome, Inc. look like?

Not as much as it used to. There's some very good vegan ice cream out there. Just expect to pay more and have less selection.

It is, but when I am skimming a list of titles for talks or a description for a talk, I mix them up for a half second.

There's a "yes but" in here. Not saying the wealth accumulation we've seen lately is good, it's absurd and horrible on multiple levels. But a comparison with the Gilded Age is going to be apples-to-oranges and it's not nearly as bad. The difference is the modern government uses far more transfer payments. That increases the income of lower income households, even if wealth is more disparate. The rich also tend to tie most income up in investments, while the poor spend their income more quickly.

The upshot is that if you compare wealth alone, the wealth difference can be deceptively large. Many poor people have a negative net worth. For that matter, many high income people have a negative net worth, like a newly graduated doctor with student loans. It is instructive to look at the wealth gap, the income gap, and income plus transfer payments.

Minors be miners.