Thank you so much for this post and your replies in the thread

The mayor of NYC pretty much has direct control over whether there is a rent freeze or not

Is there a significant chance that this power will be removed before Zohran takes office?

We need a show like The Pitt but for social workers

It’s afraid

the next object that Frank Reynolds will crawl out of naked.

Are they helping him? I think this stunt actually improves Newsom’s optics. Feels very controlled opposition.

I haven’t read it, but The People’s Republic of Walmart is all about corporate central planning.

It’s funny you suggest 3B1B, that video series was priceless for me in undergrad.

I’m a few years out from having used linear algebra extensively so little things like “which index comes first, row or column?” sometimes trip me up. But I still have the visual picture from 3B1B clear as day.

I can’t thank you enough for this post series. It’s textbook-level writing but tailored for a novice audience, I don’t know if I could find something like this anywhere else. Thank you so much for taking the time

One small note, something that might trip up the novices like me (or just me): while the meaning of the notation “A = [ai,j]i,j” is pretty simple and readily deduced from context clues, you might still want to comment a few words on the notation (mainly to reassure the reader that, yes, that means what you think it means), and if this notation has a name you may want to mention the name.

No one benefits if you destroy your mental health obsessing over the news. There’s only so much you can do, right now, as an individual, and most of it is local. You don’t have to follow all the horrors of the world to do that. You already get the gist of it. If there’s a sudden escalation, you’ll hear one way or another. I think we all need to look after ourselves and each other so we’re ready for what the future brings.

I’m out of the loop, was it this? Marc Maron on Howie Mandel’s podcast? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTTdUf59mhs

Anyone know if welib .org is affiliated with annas-archive, and more generally, if it’s trustworthy? Annas-archive is down.

I’m working my way through. This is all extremely clear and well-written. Thanks! Also, I really appreciate the background links you gave in Part 1.

Shinji get in the robot

Hell yeah dude! I’ve been excited to read this for a while now. Thanks for writing this up

I have maybe a dumb question, are the bosses supposed to know about the slow-down? Is the idea to pressure them to do something, or is sabotage the whole point?

Thanks for this engrossing writeup and for the links in the comments!

He’s sea life of some sort. There’s probably some way in which carrots are sea life too, if we really think about it.

oh? What’s going on?

Most of the world—the Global South—is poor, because they are colonized by the Global North. That is the sole purpose of the North’s wars.

Wealth flows from the Global South to the Global North to the tune of trillions of dollars a year, and the wealth gap between the North and South continues to grow despite liberal cheerleading to the contrary. Most progress against poverty has occurred in China, while elsewhere progress stagnates. Maybe send him the yellow Parenti lecture—“poor countries are not underdeveloped, they are over-exploited.”

Then tie it back to Russia and China:

Tell him about Niger, one of the world’s poorest nations despite a wealth of material resources. In 2023 they finally overthrew their west-aligned government, rejected US and French military presence, and pivoted to Russia as a security partner. Niger now plans to nationalize their uranium production, retaining those profits to provide for their own people. Russia and China threaten the dominance of the US and Europe, which threatens the profits they can extract from nations like Niger.

Tell him about China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which threatens the West’s imperial project on a global scale. Wars against Russia and Iran—and Iran’s axis of resistance throughout the Middle East—are part of a broader effort to not only prop up the petrodollar but also isolate China, stop China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and arrest China’s rising dominance. The genocide in Palestine serves this purpose. Israel functions as a US military outpost to dominate the region, and Palestinian resistance threatens that role.

As others here have mentioned, Russia views the war in Ukraine as a defensive war against NATO encroachment. And America knows this. US analysts have predicted for decades that Ukraine joining NATO would be a red line for Russia. Biden himself, earlier in his career, said as much (sorry, I can’t find my source for this). They’re doing it anyway, because they want to bankrupt and overextend Russia in order to weaken China, in order to protect their dominance over the poor nations of the world.

Russia has neither the desire nor the ability to conquer Europe. More generally, the west’s wars are never, ever defensive. Your friend needs to understand this.