Month: <span>April 2025</span>

More on how trump’s tariffs are completely idiotic, Nicole Narea at Vox (Apple News+ link):

Vietnam was hit with 46 percent tariffs, one of the highest rates on the schedule that the White House unveiled. That’s because Trump has sought to target Vietnam and other countries that have a high trade surplus with the US, believing that they’re “cheating” America. However, he ignores the reason why Vietnam has a trade surplus with the US: It is relatively poor and cannot afford to buy many American-made goods.

Any one with a high school education can figure out why there is a trade deficit with certain countries and why it wouldn’t make sense to hit them with tariffs.

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Kyla Scanlon on her weirdly named newsletter, Kyla’s Newsletter:

Trade deficits: These don’t automatically mean a country is “cheating.” A trade deficit means we import more from a country than we export to it. This can happen for benign reasons like strong consumer spending, the US dollar’s global strength, or the fact we don’t grow certain crops here. If we reduce imports from China via high tariffs, we might just buy from Vietnam or another country (likely Latin America based on the tariff rates). The overall deficit just shifts around because we simply cannot produce things like bananas or coffee here. Also, these are countries that send things to us, like Cambodia, so we have a giant trade deficit – but it isn’t because they are taking advantage of us, it’s because they simply can’t afford to buy our things. There is no way to ‘even out’ that deficit, and it really shouldn’t be a goal.

Just an overall great piece on this whole tariff bullshit.

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Kevin Wammer on what he calls his life framework:

A collection of rules, thoughts, and ideas I try to live by. I’m posting them here as a reminder to myself, not for you to copy, though you’re welcome to steal a few and make them your own. They might not apply to you at all, but publishing them forced me to sit down and shape them. Otherwise, they’d still be gathering dust in my notes app.

Some of my favorites:

• Curate your inputs. Cut the noise. Cut the hatred.
• Make weird shit.
• Eat whole foods. Not everything needs to be “clean”, but your grandmother should recognize it.
• Be useful. Be kind. Be decent. Don’t be an ass.

The whole list is great, it’s worth checking out. A lot of these self improvement books, articles, podcasts, etc. are all the same basic ideas repeated and remixed over and over. Once you’ve seen it in one form, you’ve seen it all.

Still, it’s a good reminder that all this really isn’t that hard.

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Mark Rober takes on Tesla Full Self Driving in his latest video.

The results do not surprise me.

On a road trip to Northern CA, our first in an EV, I used Tesla’s FSD on the boring part of the 5. Ahead of us were skid marks where you could tell a car lost control and veered off the road. As we got closer to the skid marks, I could feel the car start to “follow” the skid marks. I firmly grabbed the wheel and and turned it enough so that FSD stopped and I took control.

That was the moment I came to the realization that FSD is bullshit. I’ve tried it here and there since Tesla gives you 30 day free trials for users to try it out in hopes of buying or subscribing. That right there should give you pause. But on other trips, there were numerous times where it just wasn’t confidence inspiring and it just did dumb stuff.

Tesla Full Self Driving is bullshit.

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