State of the Discussion

London’s foreign-born population is 41%.

And the percentage of foreign born residents in New York City over the years would be what?

If you're going to cherry pick numbers, gotta expect folks here will notice.

CharlesWT - The UK’s foreign-born population was 4.2% in 1951, 8.3% in 2001, and 16% in 2021.

I'm not taking issue with you here, CharlesWT, but I am going to note, for the sake of information literacy, that the Wiki entry you cite has some problems with the data that bear scrutiny.

The 1951 and 2001 data come from one data source and the 2021 data from another. The first set counts "foreign born" population, and the last one counts "migrants." Those two things are defined in the sources that are being cited, but a closer look at those shows that "foreign born" and "migrant" are not at all the same things, and the way that the Wiki article is written, they never foreground any difference.

If you chase the source for the earlier dates, you will find that, for example, in 1971 about a third of the "foreign born" population came from families where one or both parents were born in the UK.

That would mean that for the purposes of the data from 1971, Boris Johnson would count as "foreign born," but had he been born in 2017, he would not have counted for the table because he would not be considered a "migrant," since his parents were only abroad in the US temporarily while his father was attending university there.

I suspect that there are a lot of incongruities and methodological problems in that article, but I don't expect that the average reader - even one with an undergraduate degree - would have the habits of mind to check for, or reflect on, the impacts of such problems on the conclusions being drawn from them.

This is why teaching information literacy is so challenging, and why people get impatient with academics. To paraphrase The Who, the simple things we see are all complicated, and most of us just want to get our washing done.

Substitute your lies for fact
I can see right through your plastic mac
I look all white, but my dad was black
My fine looking suit is really made out of sack

I’ll bet that in the last 1000 years England has seen more immigration than in the previous 500,000,000 years.

Britain was almost entirely depopulated by the end of the last glacial maxima 22,000 years ago. All of Scotland and Ireland were under the ice. Southern England was inhospitable tundra. At least on a percentage basis, the immigration after the ice started to retreat was probably larger than the last 1,000 years.

There was a ten-year period during the Blair government England had more immigration than during the previous thousand years.

Keep those context free facts coming Charles! There were probably as many, if not more who came from 1950-60. However, at that time, they were called citizens of the Empire, not immigrants.

It is *SO* obnoxious seeing obviously AI-produced images, and having the obsessive need to count fingers just to suppress the "My name is Inigo Montoya" reflex.

But check the soil first. I would not eat anything grown in our little backyard garden* - at least not without changing the top 1 m of earth first. Everytime anything is done on this building, the materials are stored there and I take it as a given that some nasty stuff seeped into the soil on more than one occasion in the last half century we have lived there.

*the rental flats on the raised ground floor have one (with stairs from the balcony leading down to it).

It seems that backlash against immigrants is a human nature thing that happens everywhere. And also it seems that political parties historically reformist, humane, and focused on public interest will throw someone under the bus to pander to the rightwing.

Meanwhile we are under siege. Horrible, terrifying noises from above. Thunks and bumps and the interminable whine of machinery. The dogs are crouching under the coffee table.

It's the guy blowing leaves off our roof.

lj, I suppose it depends a lot on the behavior of the companies one is familiar with. I've certainly seen (and worked for) some that practice "devil take the hindmost" capitalism.

But I've also worked for companies which thought being a good person and a good citizen was important. And seen a lot more of them. Plus, of course, their owners and managers were bright enough to realize that their people were what kept the whole thing running.

Two observations.

These guys have enough money invested that they can remain solvent longer than the market can remain rational.

And the fact that this is an AI bubble makes me wonder if the valuations are being generated by an LLM hallucination as well...

It’s not like there are some tiny companies, hidden in the shadows, that are somehow ‘doing capitalism right’.

Actually, I think there are. Not just tiny ones either; medium and moderately large ones, too.

The behemoths get all the attention precisely because they are so big. As you say, a handful of them make up half the NASDAQ. But by numbers, as opposed to simple market capitalization, the vast majority not only do more business, they employ, in aggregate, far more people.

And they survive by doing capitalism right. Not "right" as a lot of economists seem define it. They take care of their customers and they take care of their people. Without screwing over either in pursuit of a tiny fraction of a percent better numbers. And their executives don't make tens (or hundreds) of thousands of times as much as their average employees.

What kills me is that this is basically capitalism 101 and the Chinese are proving to be a whole lot better at it that the US.

Say rather that the Chinese are a lot better at it than enormous Silicon Valley firms. Which is to say, firms that so dominate their niche that they no longer have to pay much attention to competition. If you are Google or Microsoft or Amazon, you've got money to burn. So why not spend some of it on whatever shiny object has caught your biggest shareholder's eye?

Expect them to eventually, possibly sooner rather than later, discover why not. Although, if they can (apparently) afford to pay their CEOs hundreds of millions per year, maybe not.

the faithful remain observant

That Fox-viewing data doesn't support my speculation, but TV-viewing habits don't necessarily reflect whether motivation/enthusiasm has waned.

I continue to watch my favorite sports teams even when they aren't doing so well, but I don't care as much.

Still, I'd prefer that Fox viewership was dropping, so ... crap.

At current valuations AI would have to bring in $400 per year per US resident for the AI companies to produce a decent return on investment. Which isn’t happening in the foreseeable future.

Individuals may not spend $400 on AI-based services. Employers may purchase much more than that on behalf of each of their (remaining) employees.

I wonder if there’s such a thing as MAGA fatigue. By that, I don’t mean the fatigue that I would guess most of the people commenting here feel after dealing with all the bullsh*t the MAGAts produce. I mean fatigue among the MAGA faithful.

I suppose they are more Heritage-faithful than actual MAGA-faithful. But quite a few of the negative rulings lately seem to be coming from judges who were appointed by Trump. Which probably mostly speaks to the level of incompetence of the new bozos at DoJ.

Even making the heroic assumption that the various fabs are not severely damaged or destroyed.

It seems insane to me, but if China were to decide that if they can't have 3nm chips -- and Biden certainly leaned on Taiwan and countries that might act as intermediaries to block access -- then no one can have 3nm chips... well, a dozen ballistic missiles with big enough HE payloads (and sufficient accuracy) puts TSMC out of that business. TSMC is building a very large campus and production lines in Arizona, but has consistently said they don't plan on ever locating their leading edge processes there.

They screw up and, in trying to fix or cover up their screw-up, they screw up even further. But I suppose it all starts with Pro Bono's "And, separately, the whole case is a crock," which is the original screw-up.

On another somewhat related subject, I wonder if there's such a thing as MAGA fatigue. By that, I don't mean the fatigue that I would guess most of the people commenting here feel after dealing with all the bullsh*t the MAGAts produce. I mean fatigue among the MAGA faithful.

Being in that state of mind has to be exhausting, doesn't it?

I guess what happened is that the Grand Jury indicated it had voted, narrowly, for two of the three counts, and Halligan assumed she could just replace the three-count indictment with a two-count one, without checking back with the whole Jury. If so, it's a procedural error rather than actual fraud. But still, I guess, sufficient to get the indictment thrown out.

It seems the indictment should fail also because Halligan misrepresented the law to the Jury. And, separately, because her appointment was invalid.

And, separately, the whole case is a crock.

There's a general sense that the Trump mob think they can do anything they want, and the far-right six on SCOTUS will make it work. Not, I think, this time.

Nvidia designs chips. All of their chips are fabricated by TSMC in Taiwan. 

Another potential issue here. If China decides to forcibly reunite Taiwan, all that chip production is no longer secure. (Even making the heroic assumption that the various fabs are not severely damaged or destroyed.)

That would, I suspect, bring AI expansion to an abrupt halt. With obvious massive disruption to any business (not just AI providers) which has reorganized and restructured their operations to depend on it.

Should have added, the various companies that have decided to design their own chips for AI -- Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, probably some others -- also depend on TSMC for fabrication.

the software industry as a whole is all-in on AI (LLMs in particular).

makers are trying to stuff it into every nook and cranny they can find.

As noted, the costs are enormous. So using AI everywhere is the only prayer of actually making any money from it.

And for non-AI software companies, it's a matter of not looking like they are less than cutting edge. It's folly, except in a few narrow cases. But here instinct is powerful in the industry.

His Orangeness probably wishes that Epstein had de-filed all the evidence and sooner or later will try to get Bondi to do it for him (and then claim that Hillary did it).