Maven Roundtable

I recently found out that Barr Sr wrote a ‘SiFi’ book with the theme of sex slavery among space aliens. The book apparently starts with sexual assault on a minor. That this same man ran a private school simply does not compute for this middle class person unless Kubrick’s last work was not fiction: https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/william-barr-s-fath…

If you were Feynman you'd even call it "elementary" https://mavenroundtable.io/originalpath/path-helpers/feynman-s-lost-le…

> Do you have examples? Stock buybacks used to be illegal, until they weren't. Very relevant in the current market. Not insider trading as such, but a form of manipulation that one might consider related. https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/stock-buybacks-were…

A Princeton study in 2014 found that public opinion in the U.S. has virtually no influence on national policy decisions. https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/study-the-u-s-has-l… Subsequent studies have found that it's not as bad as all that. But even they found that the public often doesn't get what it wants. Therefore we can't conclude there's no public consensus for a ban just because the government hasn't done it already.

Take the case of this American politician: https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/wsj-kushner-failed-… The guy's family has a massive debt. He was denied security clearance because that debt makes him a big risk. His party somehow push it through (politicians, sigh) and now he has been bailed out by the Saudi regime (iirc he's foreign secretary to Saudi Arabia or something - the top politician responsible for that country). In potentially sensitive or powerful positions it's only prudent to look at how susceptible someone is to being influenced. The news is full of stories of people committing fraud to pay for gambling debts. Treason isn't exactly far off of that..

To clarify, instead of building a strong company with a strong workforce as was the historical norm in the USA during it's prosperous times, companies 'invest' in stock buybacks, which do NOTHING to strengthen the company, their sole purpose is to manipulate the company's stock in the short term. Forget workers rights, we all need to 'unionize' (work in union) to eliminate stock buybacks and get them reclassified as stock manipulation like there were prior to Ronald Reagan's presidency. If companies want to 'give money away' with respect to stocks, they can issue dividends, which changes to dynamics of the stock market (Prosperous pre-1980s America's 'I buy a company because it will be strong long term and pay me dividends' versus enshitified 2024 American stock market's 'I buy stocks for short term one time capital gains at the expense of all else'). https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/stock-buybacks-were…

The US needs voting reform badly. Race is currently one of the strongest predictors for how long people wait in line to vote even when you control for poverty [1]. Sadly, I don't see it happening without a change in our political landscape. The Senate has been actively blocking legislation to restore the voting rights act for the past 315 days [2]. This is the legislation introduced in the 1960's to prevent racial discrimination in elections at the height of the civil rights movement. Unfortunately, enforcement has been stripped out over the past few decades making it completely toothless. The tragedy, is that the legislation to restore its power isn't even being blocked because of discussions and legislative differences that can be worked through. It is being blocked by the majority leader just refusing to even hear or vote about it. [1] https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/study-race-one-of-s… [2] https://www.axios.com/john-lewis-voting-rights-senate-5fb8d35c-bac0-44…

> it's astounding to me that affordable broadband access is still an issue even in the United States Not sure how to respond to this, other than to point out that by most metrics, the US is largely a 3rd world country: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/theres-a-third-world-america-t… https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/study-by-mit-econom… https://www.fairobserver.com/region/north_america/poverty-in-america-t… https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/six-ways-america-i… https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-developing-nation… etc., etc.