“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”

“Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose. To that high concept there can be no end save victory.”

“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.”

“We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of nations far away. We have learned that we must live as men, and not as ostriches nor as dogs in the manger. We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.”

I’m not sure the profession I joined last century would attract me today.

Why? This is @GordWait on Mastodon: 

“At our office, we are noticing a huge drop in Comp Sci co-op applications. The next generation is convinced there’s no future in programming thanks to AI hype.”

All that changed when Trump eliminated “de minimis” exemptions from duties. The main effect was that the whole process became much more complicated, customers found themselves having to pay unexpected duties, and when they refused (or couldn’t) the shippers had to figure out what to do with the undeliverable items. Some carriers simply refused to participate.

Not knowing how this would play out, I held off ordering anything from the UK. And then last November a British model bus retailer announced an attractive new product, and I decided to try to order it and see how it went. So I contacted them, and they told me that the British Post Office had become impossible to work with, so all overseas orders were being handled by an Irish company. So this is how the process played out, including all communications and costs. (Hopefully this will be useful.)

Jan 16: I placed my order with the Irish reseller. The price quoted was €66.95 ($79.48) with shipping €22.00 ($26.12), for a total of €88.95 ($105.60). My credit card was charged the same day.
Jan.18: I received a refund for €7.46 ($8.86) corresponding to the VAT, together with a note that the package would be posted the next day.
Jan.26: I received an email from An Post (the Irish postal service) notifying me that they’d received the package, and that I would have to pay Duties and Taxes before it would be shipped to the US. I paid online through EVRI, and my credit card was billed $24.67.
Feb.4: An Post emailed me that the package had been received at their International Hub, had been processed, and was now on the way to the USA.
Feb.13: An Post notified me that “Your parcel has arrived in the USA and will now be processed for delivery.” However they didn’t tell me which carrier would handle delivery, nor did they provide a local tracking number.
Feb.14: The package was delivered. It looks as though local delivery was handled by SpeedX.

So the total time from order to delivery was four weeks. Converting everything to USD, the price with shipping was $105.60, minus $8.86 for VAT, or $96.74 . Duty was $24.67, bringing the total cost to $121.41. Put another way, I bought a $79.48 model bus and paid $41.93 for shipping and duties. The overall time was longer but reasonable, although there were several odd gaps in tracking.

It’s a great little model, and I’m glad to have it in my collection. However I may wait until my next trip to the UK before I buy any more….

“The following information may be wholly or partially incorrect. If you choose to share or publish it, and it turns out that the information is false, defamatory, illegal, fraudulent, copyrighted, or otherwise actionable, you are personally responsible for all of the consequences. OpenAI disclaims any responsibility for anything.”

This observation was prompted by a story in The Guardian.

People are quickly discovering what they once professed to find unacceptable might not be so bad. And it will be felt as a relief. No longer will they have to echo bien-pensant hypocrisies, they can engage in frank, honest assertions of their self-interest.

And:

“Plutot Trump que le Wokisme” seems to be the slogan of the center-right that once whinged about the Constitution and our sacred norms.

From https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/welcome-to-vichy-america . Read the whole thing.

But she didn’t.

#primary2026

“The rich rabble is marked by the ‘corruptness’ which manifests in the fact that the rabble ‘takes everything for granted for itself’ because he denies the right to any of the ethical, legal, or statist institutions…[it assumes] an economically determined state of nature, in which it can also assume the economic right of the fittest.” It also believes in conspiracy, because it experiences itself politically as a conspirator, as part of a self-interested group only working for its own ends.

(Frank Ruda, quoted by John Ganz. )