Richard Michael Blaber

@ChrisMayLA6 @sjwrenlewis Really? The supposed "U-turn" on #disability #benefits is just a tactical retreat until Timms delivers his Review, & the cut to the health element of UC is going ahead. Furthermore, the Govt. plan to cut the legal entitlement of #disabled #children to #SEND #education. Starmer has reiterated his opposition to a #wealth tax. There's plenty of money for nuclear warheads, though!

wist

A quotation from John Maynard Keynes

[Capitalism is] the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds.

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) English economist
(Attributed)

Vague sourcing, extensive notes: wist.info/keynes-john-maynard/…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #keynes #avarice #benefits #capitalism #commongood #commonwealth #endsandmeans #evil #greed #idealism #meme #motivation #nastiness #optimum #results #selfinterest #wealth #wickedness

Bytes Europe

Millionaires on the move: Italy to attract 3,600 billionaires in 2025 byteseu.com/1162795/ #billionaire #Italy #UnitedStates #wealth

Karen Strickholm

📢📢📢 WAIT A MINUTE WAIT A MINUTE!!!

Was watching this softball on the Musk family, until the part where Errol Musk (father) has TWO CHILDREN WITH HIS (STEP) DAUGHTER!!! What a clan.

youtu.be/HJg72gdiD3Y?si=xu50KM

#Politics #GentryClass #Wealth #Entertainment #Food #Agriculture #Space

Catherine Schmidt

#politics #alt #cbo #trump #tariffs #economy #inflation #debt #greed #wealth #wealthinequality #oligarchs #consumers

Heather Cox Richardson 6/3/25
Republicans Attack Nonpartisan Economist /Consumers Pay the Bill

Emeritus Prof Christopher May

More proof that the UK is used as a (property based) store house for illicit wealth.

Over £64bn worth of property in England & Wales, despite a move towards greater transparency of ownership, is still owned via Trusts that keep beneficial ownership secret;

the information now available also demonstrates how the property market is deployed to both store & launder illicit capital flows.

We are effectively a savings scheme for global crooks!

#property #wealth #corruption
theguardian.com/world/2025/may

At least £64bn of property in England and Wales is hidden behind opaque trusts

Campaigners say secretive ownership structures are…

The Guardian
Nonilex

Ogle said he has no real motive for attending #Trump’s event beyond curiosity over “who…is moneyed enough to attend.” He hopes “some dignitary comes, or a sheikh.”

A longtime #crypto enthusiast, Ogle said he “got into it for the cypherpunk ideology” & sometimes dislikes how the industry has evolved…into just “making cash.” But while he said he hopes the industry returns to its old values, like privacy & decentralization, he’s also not above enjoying the perks of crypto #wealth & #elite #access.

charliebrownau
At what point will Christcucks and natsocks
finally give up on National Federal Statism ?

#Statism #Thief #Wealth-redistribution
Nonilex

However, the dinner maneuver may have political consequences for #Trump. In creating the opportunity for anybody w/sufficient #wealth to purchase an audience, Trump risks falling foul of a part of the US #Constitution — the #EmolumentsClause — that prohibit the president from accepting #gifts or financial #compensation from foreign & domestic state actors. In a worst-case scenario for the president, the potential for negative optics could add fuel to calls for his #impeachment.

#law

Emeritus Prof Christopher May

While wealth is hoarded by the top 10%, the two specific wealth taxes (inheritance tax & capital gains tax) raise little tax revenue

So this suggests to some, reforming these taxes would not really expand the tax-take on wealth.... but looking at where wealth is actually stored, we might posit that taxing property & private pensions more could be the answer.

However, major political lobbies would resist reform of council tax or reductions in tax relief on pensions!

#tax #wealth #politics

Vyram Kraven
Socialization has gone downhill! People do not recognize individuality & assume the ladder. Lets say for instance you say one thing about something & that's your personal opinion. Have you ever been scrutinized for that personal opinion like you picked the wrong side then been called a leftist like you support the whole ladder & categories of ideals because of that one personal opinion?

Oh yeah someone knows what i'm talking about. People forget that's just one thing of one way that you think. That opinion does not define your entirety or character. Could we like go back to the 90s were more people understood sticks & stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me?

I can't believe someone bugged out on me all because I said get on my level. In regards to a video game. I quote "CRINGEEEEEEE YOU KNOW PEOPLE LIKE YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO BULLY YOU WERE TAKING ALL THE DAMAGE & SURVIVING YOU WEREN'T DODGING WELL SO WHAT YOU WANT ME TO GET ON THE LEVEL OF SOMEONE WHO CAN'T DODGE?"

Me: I must be dodging well because in this 6 player group you died first & I outlasted everyone against the boss so I can't be that bad since I was the last person alive for over 30 minutes before I died to the boss.

Cringe motherfucker: Reported & muted!
Me: bye bye crybaby
Cringe motherfucker: your whispering me after I muted you & reported you must be obsessed blocked,
Me:I guess your colorblind too because you can't tell what's local chat & what a whisper is idiot & if I was muted you wouldn't have seen my msg in local chat.
cringe motherfucker: CRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIINNNGE!
*leaves area*

2025 is so fucked idk how anyones gunna expect a good relationship with anyone born later then 2000. I hope you're prepared to deal with insecurity all over. Everyone has it but 2025 took it to a new level.

You know what grinds my gears people who assume your doing something illegal because you care about privacy. That's just some bullshit analogy an asshole uses to toot their own horn & convince themselves that their made up justification is right because they think so. Those people deserve a kick in the balls or twat.

Lets talk about vulgarity for a minute. Can you really judge someone by how vulgar they are? Living here taught me you can't I hear people say motherfucker & cock sucka every 4 or 8 words in every sentence. These aren't bad people we just live in a rough enviroment & everyone doesn't have time because of our fucked up economy so our living situation the enviroment tells us every second counts. It's high pressure living here & being in this enviroment will affect you. Maybe you will be next to bump into someone & go what the fuck motherfucker are you doing cock sucka?

If our economy was better way wat better like 1960 better we would probably be like all the middle & west states that have cheap living. All country super religious & very proper. But that's not our enviroment. So if my comments on your notes ever seem vulgar or come off as harsh. I'm a product of my enviroment & you are a product of yours get over it this is reality & this is how the world is. Don't take it personal not everyone was born in a sugarcoated enviroment that's why the saying real recognize real exists. Where I live shit is real, where you may live it may be peaceful.

I've never lived in a small county, farmlands, or a peaceful small town. Yeah I don't travel much I would like to change that but I need a sugarmommy for that. I'll admit it I don't know peace I only know how to keep going forward.

With that said if your interested make it clear i'm oblivious as fuck. I deal with problems so my minds on fixing things not fucking em $$$ bills bills bills.

#truth #food4thought #lesson #dating #mental #morality #individuality #sexuality #enviroment #youaretheproduct #truth #worfsofwisdom #mind #wealth #Bitcoin #BTC #Nostr #Lightning #Zap #Zapathon #Zaps #Plebs #Plebchain #GrowNostr #Nostriches #Money⚡ #Zapatime #Happy #RideThe⚡ #Zapstr #Plebdrive #Zapdrive #zapchain #bitchain #boost #share #boosted #bitdrive $boost

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Charles Synyard

“There was something different about her Soccer Sisters. Makena and Val were Chloe’s friends because they shared a passion and because they had been through so much together.
“Mud, sweat, tears.
“They won, and they lost.
“Together.
“Always.” (21)

Finished reading One on One, the third and final book in the Soccer Sisters series by Andrea Montalbano, a few days ago. First published in this Sourcebooks Jabberwocky edition in 2018, this one stars Chloe Gordon, the rich girl on the Brookville Breakers, and sister to Andrew, Val’s love interest in the second book, Caught Offside. A talented ballerina, but not the best soccer player, this one follows Chloe and her friends as they attend World Cup Soccer Camp and encounter their old nemesis, Skylar. There are several parts that speak movingly to the meaning of team spirit and the importance of sports, but a few spots that give me misgivings about the whole soccer “for girls” enterprise.

One on One begins with pointed reminders that, as an adolescent, Chloe has one foot squarely into adulthood, and another, a grand jeté apart, still in childhood. While packing products for feminine necessity, she’s aggrieved her mom asks if she remembered her blankie (1). Only for the narrator to admit next page, “(And truth be told, she did have a special blanket she always slept with),” (2). Chloe’s mom wishes she would focus on ballet and drop soccer, fearing bruising or permanent injuries, and Chloe just barely gets permission to attend the two week soccer camp (her brother is on her side, while her dad, lately preoccupied by a kitten, is also more supportive). Later, Chloe realizes how her mother had thoughtfully bought her a new pair of cleats, however; she had just taken them on finding them, and never thanked her (94).

While Chloe isn’t the best player, even on their Brookville Breakers youth team, it means a lot to her. Why? Pages 21-22 are a beautiful evocation of why team sports are special, and add something to life. Chloe recalls a grueling game played in the sleet. Ending in a loss, her parents had been appalled the game wasn’t postponed, but Chloe and her Soccer Sisters got something meaningful out of the hard fought loss.

”The final score was Breakers 0, Fusion 1. The Breakers may have lost, but they weren’t defeated, and they left the field more bonded than ever.
”When Chloe walked the halls of school the next day and her eyes met one of her Soccer Sisters’ eyes, there was a nod. An understanding.
”We play for keeps.” (22)

This brings to mind, and perfectly fits with something much higher up in reading level in literature. On Wikipedia, there’s a piece under “Lord-bondsman dialectic” on some of the thought of Hegel on the master-slave relationship. In a hypothetical single combat (the original “One on One”), the victor has not yielded, while his foe, if left living, has—he has chosen not to resist to the death. This has immense significance for the notion of honor and the justness of the political order. In this lowly children’s book for girl soccer lovers, we get the same thing: only neither side has yielded and both survived, bettered by their day on the field. At a time when “sportsball” being castigated as a decadent, monetized waste of time is old news, and I myself rarely pay attention to it, I liked this reminder of why sports have an important place in civilization.

After we’re treated to a lovely description of the moonlit night at camp on page 114, we get a more disconcerting passage. Chloe really takes to Flavia, one of the camp counselors, who comes from Brazil. Following a food fight Makena and Val accidentally start, Flavia, who grew up in a favela, does the expected part of relating her disappointment with the privileged kids, who always have enough to eat, wasting their food. She also tells Chloe how, as a girl, she had to struggle to play soccer in sexist Brazil, bobbing her hair and playing on a boys’ team. On page 115,

”Flavia told Chloe the story of Sissi, one of the greatest Brazilian players ever. Only her brothers were given soccer balls to play with. Even to sleep with! Sissi got dolls instead. Finally, she decided to rip the heads off the dolls and kick them around. So her mother at last convinced her father to give her a ball. To save the dolls!”

A visceral, even horrifying thing to imagine. Checked, and it turns out Sissi (Siselide do Amor Lima) is a real Brazilian woman footballer, and while the story isn’t given on Wikipedia, a brief search confirms it’s true. She ripped the heads off her dolls, and used them as balls in protest of not being allowed to play soccer!
https://archive.ph/lCIyp
https://archive.ph/WjSGv
https://archive.ph/HE5AB
I don’t know about you, but this gives me deep misgivings over the whole women’s sports enterprise. Were it not certain Montalbano is an advocate of girls playing soccer (Soccer Sisters is a real organization, and the back of the book has information and links to several groups promoting girls playing soccer, including GOALS Armenia, which works in her husband’s native land), I would have thought this was a metaphor thrown in to make readers second guess the opinions they had formed in the first half of the book. Is playing rough, demanding sports a rejection of femininity? Does it lead girls away from the path to motherhood that is the vocation of most of them? Decapitating toys that look like babies sounds like a dry run for the liberal-feminist ethos, which sees abortion as an essential in freeing women from the care of offspring and allowing them to live more like men do, but has been a disaster for our world across all cultures. If Montalbano wanted to present an unambiguous case for women’s sports, she managed to do a poor job eloquently.

Thankfully, One on One isn’t all so abrasive. Last included pages have Chloe lying with Makena and Val in a cute, daisy chainish triangle on the grass as Chloe contemplates what binds them together (119).

”She thought about fierce Val and zany Makena and even Skylar, cruel as she was. They were all unique. From different cultures and places yet still somehow similar on the inside.
“Suddenly, she knew what they all shared.
”Determination.
”They wouldn’t give up, and neither would she.” (120)

Those are the standout moments; I didn’t find the plot quite as engaging as in the first two books. Summer camp provides many opportunities for Skylar, who has learned nothing from the first book, Out of Bounds (why she is still allowed to play in any soccer organizations at all, after pulling a fire alarm at a hotel during a tournament, is never explained), to pick on Chloe for being a ballerina. Jessie, a fellow Breaker who clashed with Val in the second book, gets assigned a dorm with Skylar, and immediately becomes buddies with the bully. A great moment does come when, during skits, Chloe finally owns her talent by showing off some of her ballet moves. For some strange reason Val, whom I just loved in Caught Offside, has taken to saying “Dude!” all the time, and quickly grows annoying. As far as the soccer training itself goes, aside from when the girls get disciplined for their food fight, I don’t feel like there was enough focus on how their training was different from practice back home. And as this closes the trilogy, I regret to say that while bullet points on the Soccer Sisters code, there were never any comic plots about failing to bring snacks on assigned days, or beating the boys at recess soccer!
#AndreaMontalbano #OneOnOne #SoccerSisters #adolescence #wealth #womenssports #ballet #femininity #feminism #feminist #Brazil #Hegel #teamspirit #team #sportsmanship #soccer #football #sportsball #sports #childrensliterature #childrensbooks #literature #books

FreeSchool = W🔁rk T🔁gether☑

Diminishing returns VS. #Donations

Was funny / coincidental....

Was looking at Wikipedia page:

#Law of #Diminishing Returns page and coincidentally it showed a donations advert...

Now it's #Wikipedia so it's fine but imagine a pay-gate next (like everything else, which is quite logical if people don't like paying through US banks or just don't pay at all being stingy / poor)

I thought this was worth saying as there are a number of valid factors destined to become poor,

And if you like paying through American banks do give)... even if I wouldn't because all the #Wealth seems to turn out for the worse in the end... (and via US Bank$ #US mis-managing it all behind your back - sorry but seem #USPol seems totally related to #donations and #banking after all)... Peace.

#LawofDiminishingReturns
#DiminishingReturns
#Enshitification

Analyst Hyacinth, in the moss

>> BRIAN (cont'd): ...But it isn't what happens - the rich accumulate more and more #wealth. It doesn't trickle down to anybody, it trickles up actually.

> Q: #Labor have obviously been very, very reluctant to speak about a wealth #tax because they say that it might drive wealth creators or #business people out of the country. Do you agree with that assessment?

>>

Mar 30, 2025, 00:42 · · · 0 · 0
Analyst Hyacinth, in the moss

>> BRIAN: It's obvious to me that there's a feedback loop involved in #wealth, which to say if you get a little bit #rich, you are very likely to get richer. It works the other way 'round with #poverty - if you get poor, you’re very likely to get poorer, so those things are not self-correcting...it doesn't work. There's not the #TrickleDownTheory that people used to believe in...that it's good for people to get rich 'cuz that money gets dispersed among poorer people so it helps them.

>>

Mar 30, 2025, 00:41 · · · 0 · 0
Analyst Hyacinth, in the moss

> Q: What's your message to....#millionaires or #billionaires, you know, people like #ElonMusk who obviously don't think the same way you do and think that they should...be allowed to accumulate their #wealth into the billions and billions of pounds? What would your message be for those people?

>>

Mar 30, 2025, 00:39 · · · 0 · 0