#Components of Price Action

[stockexperttrading]

This comprehensive blog from Funded Traders Global covers the Price Action Strategy and mastering market trends for successful trading. It begins by defining the Price Action Strategy, emphasizing its importance in predicting future price movements. The blog explores the components of Price Action, including candlestick patterns, support and resistance levels, and chart patterns. It highlights the benefits of this strategy, such as simplicity, enhanced decision-making, and its applicability to various markets.

The blog outlines key principles of Price Action, including candlestick patterns, support and resistance levels, and trendlines and channels. It then focuses on reading market trends, with an emphasis on identifying trends, assessing their strength, and recognizing trend reversals. The importance of setting clear trading goals and effective risk management is stressed, along with crafting precise entry and exit strategies.

Common mistakes to avoid in trading are discussed, including overtrading, ignoring fundamental analysis, and emotional trading. The blog also provides information on essential tools and resources, including recommended charting software, books, courses, and online trading communities to support traders in their journey.

In conclusion, the blog encourages traders to apply the knowledge gained, practice consistently, and continue their education to become proficient and successful traders. Trading is described as both an art and a science, emphasizing the importance of discipline and adaptability in the ever-evolving world of finance.

[fozmeadows]

there is no ethical consumption under capitalism

Years ago now, I remember seeing the rape prevention advice so frequently given to young women - things like dressing sensibly, not going out late, never being alone, always watching your drink - reframed as meaning, essentially, "make sure he rapes the other girl." This struck a powerful chord with me, because it cuts right to the heart of the matter: that telling someone how to lower their own chances of victimhood doesn't stop perpetrators from existing. Instead, it treats the existence of perpetrators as a foregone conclusion, such that the only thing anyone can do is try, by their own actions, to be a less appealing or more difficult victim.

And the thing is, ever since the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, I've kept on thinking about how, in this day and age, CEOs of big companies often have an equal or greater impact on the day to day lives of regular people than our elected officials, and yet we have almost no legal way to redress any grievances against them - even when their actions, as in the case of Thompson's stewardship of UHC, arguably see them perpetrating manslaughter at scale through tactics like claims denial. That this is a real, recurring thing that happens makes the American healthcare insurance industry a particularly pernicious example, but it's far from being the only one. Because the original premise of the free market - the idea that we effectively "vote" for or against businesses with our dollars, thereby causing them to sink or swim on their individual merits - is utterly broken, and has been for decades, assuming it was ever true at all. In this age of megacorporations and global supply chains, the vast majority of people are dependent on corporations for necessities such as gas, electricity, internet access, water, food, housing and medical care, which means the consumer base is, to all intents and purposes, a captive market. We might not have to buy a specific brand, but we have to buy a brand, and as businesses are constantly competing with one another to bring in profits, not just for the company and its workers, but for C-suites and shareholders - profits that increasingly come at the expense of workers and consumers alike - the greediest, most inhumane corporations set the financial yardstick against which all others are then, of necessity, measured. Which means that, while businesses are not obliged to be greedy and inhumane in order to exist, overwhelmingly, they become greedy and humane in order to compete, because capitalism encourages it, and because there are precious few legal restrictions to stop them from doing so. At the same time, a handful of megacorporations own so many market-dominating brands that, without both significant personal wealth and the time and resources to find viable alternatives, it's all but impossible to avoid them, while the ubiquity of the global supply chain means that, even if you can keep track of which company owns which brand, it's much, much harder to establish which suppliers provide the components that are used in the products bearing their labels. Consider, for instance, how many mainstream American brands are functionally run on sweatshop labour in other parts of the world: places where these big corporations have outsourced their workforce to skirt the already minimal labour and wage protections they'd be obliged to adhere to in the US, all to produce (say) electronics whose elevated sticker price passes a profit on to the company, but without resulting in higher wages for either the sweatshop workers overseas or the American employees selling the products in branded US stores.

When basically every major electronics corporation is engaged in similar business practices, there is no "vote" our money can bring that causes the industry itself to be better regulated - and as wealthy, powerful lobbyists from these industries continue to pay exorbitant sums of money to politicians to keep government regulation at a minimum, even our actual votes can do little to effect any sort of change. But even in those rare instances where new regulations are passed, for multinational corporations, laws passed in one country overwhelmingly don't prevent them from acting abusively overseas, exploiting more desperate populations and cash-poor governments to the same greedy, inhumane ends. And where the ultimate legal penalty for proven transgressions is, more often than not, a fine - which is to say, a fee; which is to say, an amount which, while astronomical by the standards of regular people, still frequently costs the company less than the profits earned through their unethical practices, and which is paid from corporate coffers rather than the bank accounts of the CEOs who made the decisions - big corporations are, in essence, free to act as badly as they can afford to; which is to say, very. Contrary to the promise of the free market, therefore, we as consumers cannot meaningfully "vote" with our dollars in a way that causes "good" businesses to rise to the top, because everything is too interconnected. Our choices under global capitalism are meaningless, because there is no other system we can financially support that stands in opposition to it, and while there are still small businesses and companies who try to operate ethically, both their comparative smallness and their interdependent reliance on the global supply chain means that, even if we feel better about our choices, we're not exerting any meaningful pressure on the system we're trying to change. Which means that, under the free market, trying to be an ethical consumer is functionally equivalent to a young woman dressing modestly, not going out alone and minding her drink at parties in order to avoid being raped. We're not preventing corporate predation or sending a message to corporate predators: we're just making sure they screw other worker, the other consumer, the other guy.

All of which is to say: while I'd prefer not to live in a world where shooting someone dead in the street is considered a valid means of redressing grievances, what the murder of Brian Thompson has shown is that, if you provide no meaningful recourse for justice against abusive, exploitative members of the 1%, then violence done to those people will have the feel of justice, because it fills the void left by the lack of consequences for their actions. It's the same reason why people had little sympathy for the jackass OceanGate CEO who killed himself in his imploding sub, or anyone whose yacht has been attacked by orcas - it's just intensified here, because where the OceanGate CEO was felled by hubris and the yachts were random casualties, whoever killed Thomspon did so deliberately, because of what he did. It was direct action against a man whose policies very arguably constituted manslaughter at scale; a crime which ought to be a crime, but which has, to date, been permitted under the law. And if the law wouldn't stop him, can anyone be surprised that someone might act outside the law in retaliation - or that regular people would cheer for them when they did?

[guerillas-of-history]

🔴 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine:

The occupation bears full responsibility for the chaos.

We warn against exploiting our people’s suffering and call for the formation of popular guard committees to protect the home front.

In light of the catastrophic circumstances afflicting our people in the Gaza Strip—brought about by the intensifying zionist war of genocide, the siege, and deliberate starvation, and the resulting dire humanitarian, economic, and security fallout—the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine warns of the dangerous rise in disorder, lawlessness, attacks on property, and intimidation of citizens across the Strip. These behaviors are inseparable from the zionist scheme to dismantle our unity, fracture our national and social cohesion, and plunge our internal arena into chaos and division in a desperate attempt to break our steadfastness and will.

While the Front condemns these phenomena in the strongest terms, it places full responsibility on the zionist occupation, which has created this tragic reality through bombing, destruction, a systematic policy of siege and starvation, and its ongoing targeting of civilians, institutions, and security forces—all in an overt bid to undermine the home front and erode our people’s resilience.

The Front reiterates its full support for Gaza’s security forces in pursuing outlaws and collaborators with the occupation and condemns the zionist targeting of police personnel. It calls for resolute action against these criminals through the united efforts of all segments of our people.

Accordingly, the PFLP calls for the establishment of popular guard committees throughout the Strip—drawing on national and social bodies, community figures, and youth—to safeguard public and private property, relief and service institutions, reinforce societal security, foil any attempts to foment chaos or internal strife, and confront infiltration by occupation agents or criminals.

The Front highly appreciates the stance of patriotic Palestinian families who have honorably opposed such disorder, rejected any conduct that threatens communal security and civil peace, and expressed full readiness to cooperate with the relevant authorities to protect internal stability. This popular consciousness is the true safety valve for our unity.

At the same time, the PFLP warns that some large merchants, influential figures, and businesspeople are exploiting the situation for personal gain—hoarding basic goods, hiking prices, and profiteering from money transfers at exorbitant rates. Such practices are no less dangerous than security chaos; they represent another face of exploitation and deepen citizens’ suffering. The Front therefore demands strict measures to hold anyone proven to be manipulating people’s livelihoods to account.

The present moment, with all its challenges, requires every force, sector, and component of our people to rise to the level of national responsibility and close ranks against these conspiracies. Protecting the home front, strengthening social solidarity, and standing with the afflicted and marginalized are national and moral duties—the first line of defense for our people.

The Front also stresses that what is unfolding in Gaza does not absolve the Arab nation of its responsibilities; rather, it compels it to meet its pan-Arab and humanitarian obligations toward our besieged people, to act swiftly to break the blockade, halt the massacres, and provide tangible support in the face of this open genocide backed by the United States and the West.

Glory to our resistant people and to our righteous martyrs.

Shame and disgrace to all who serve the occupation or profit from our people’s pain.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

Central Media Department

3 May 2025

[thecreaturecodex]

Swordkeeper

Image © Paizo Publishing, accessed at Archives of Nethys here

[First new monster of 2025! Which is kind of a shame, because January is almost over. But I have been doing some writing. I'm hoping to get a regular posting schedule going from now on, of twice a week. Key word is hoping]

Swordkeeper CR 10 N Construct This vaguely humanoid construct is made of metal and stone, with four arms and stout legs. Its head is shaped like a helmet and set atop a wide torso. Inside its chest is a blade, chained in place and surrounded with crackling energy.

Swordkeepers are constructs created as both a display case and security system. Each swordkeeper has a component where a weapon can be placed, and the swordkeeper can create force projections of that weapon to use in combat itself. One handed weapons are commonly placed in swordkeepers, the better for the creature to use all four of its arms, but swordkeepers dual-wielding two-handed weapons are not unheard of. Despite the name, a swordkeeper can be used to store axes, hammers, and even polearms. Most swordkeepers store +2 weapons or those of similar levels of enhancement, but even a mundane weapon may be kept in a swordkeeper if it is of particularly significance.

Although they are not sapient, swordkeepers are capable of surprisingly sophisticated tactics, the result of their magical construction. They can respond to changing battlefield conditions by switching from melee to ranged combat, use their raise guard ability to fight defensively if enemies are capable of injuring them, and create a temporary colossal echo to crush massed enemies. Most swordkeepers are given instructions to fight to the death, but some will stand down if badly injured, activate alarms, or even intentionally surrender their central weapons under particular circumstances.

Construction A swordkeeper’s central chamber requires rare crystals for its construction, worth 3000 gp.

Swordkeeper CL 13th; Price 63,000 gp Requirements Craft Construct, geas/quest, mage’s sword, shield, transformation; Skill Craft (metalworking) or Craft (stoneworking) DC 16; Price 38,000 gp

Swordkeeper CR 10 XP 9,600 N Large construct Init +5; Senses darkvision 60 ft., Perception +2

Defense AC 23, touch 14, flat-footed 18 (-1 size, +5 Dex, +9 natural) hp 107 (14d10+30) Fort +4, Ref +9, Will +6 DR 10/adamantine; Immune construct traits Defensive Abilities raise guard

Offense Speed 20 ft. Melee +1 keen longsword +21/+16/+11 (1d8+8/17-20 plus 1d8 force), 3 +1 keen longswords +21 (1d8+4/17-20 plus 1d8 force) Ranged 4 +1 keen longswords +19 (1d8+8/17-20 plus 1d8 force) Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft. Special Attacks colossal echo, project echoblade

Statistics Str 25, Dex 20, Con -, Int -, Wis 15, Cha 1 Base Atk +14; CMB +22; CMD 37 Feats Combat Reflexes (B), Improved Vital Strike (B) SQ central weapon,multiweapon mastery, undersized weaponry

Ecology Environment any land and underground Organization solitary, pair or armory (3-6) Treasure double standard (+1 keen longsword)

Special Abilities Central Weapon (Ex/Su) A swordkeeper’s torso houses a single weapon sized for a Medium creature. When the swordkeeper is operational, the chamber can be opened with four Disable Device checks (DC 35), each made as a full round action. A creature that fails this check by 5 or more takes 6d6 points of force damage (Reflex DC 19 halves). If the swordkeeper is grappled, prone or stunned, the DCs of both the Disable Device check and the Reflex save are reduced by 2. If the swordkeeper’s weapon is removed, its echoblades vanish, and it cannot use its colossal echo or project echoblade abilities. The save DC is Wisdom based. Colossal Echo (Su) As a standard action once every 1d4 rounds, a swordkeeper can create a giant force weapon shaped like its central weapon. All creatures in a 30 foot line take 10d8 points of force damage (Reflex DC 19 half). The save DC is Wisdom based. Multiweapon Mastery (Ex) A swordkeeper does not take penalties to attack rolls when fighting with multiple weapons. Project Echoblade (Su) As a swift action, a swordkeeper can create a replica of its central weapon in one of its hands. This weapon acts as its central weapon, including duplicating its magical properties, except that it deals an extra 1d8 force damage and gains the thrown property (range increment 30 ft.). A swordkeeper can have as many as four echoblades at once; echoblades disappear one round after they leave a swordkeeper’s grasp. Raise Guard (Ex) On any round when a swordkeeper makes a full attack action, it can choose not to attack with a echoblade in order to gain a +1 shield bonus to AC (maximum +3). This does not work in conjunction with Vital Strike or similar feats.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

FTC vs surveillance pricing

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

In the mystical cosmology of economics, "prices" are of transcendental significance, the means by which the living market knows and adapts itself, giving rise to "efficient" production and consumption.

At its most basic level, the metaphysics of pricing goes like this: if there is less of something for sale than people want to buy, the seller will raise the price until enough buyers drop out and demand equals supply. If the disappointed would-be buyers are sufficiently vocal about their plight, other sellers will enter the market (bankrolled by investors who sense an opportunity), causing supplies to increase and prices to fall until the system is in "equilibrium" – producing things as cheaply as possible in precisely the right quantities to meet demand. In the parlance of neoclassical economists, prices aren't "set": they are discovered.

In antitrust law, there are many sins, but they often boil down to "price setting." That is, if a company has enough "market power" that they can dictate prices to their customers, they are committing a crime and should be punished. This is such a bedrock of neoclassical economics that it's a tautology "market power" exists where companies can "set prices"; and to "set prices," you need "market power."

Prices are the blood cells of the market, shuttling nutrients (in the form of "information") around the sprawling colony organism composed of all the buyers, sellers, producers, consumers, intermediaries and other actors. Together, the components of this colony organism all act on the information contained in the "price signals" to pursue their own self-interest. Each self-interested action puts more information into the system, triggering more action. Together, price signals and the actions they evince eventually "discover" the price, an abstraction that is yanked out of the immaterial plane of pure ideas and into our grubby, physical world, causing mines to re-open, shipping containers and pipelines to spark to life, factories to retool, trucks to fan out across the nation, retailers to place ads and hoist SALE banners over their premises, and consumers to race to those displays and open their wallets.

When prices are "distorted," all of this comes to naught. During the notorious "socialist calculation debate" of 1920s Austria, right-wing archdukes of religious market fundamentalism, like Von Hayek and Von Mises, trounced their leftist opponents, arguing that the market was the only computational system capable of calculating how much of each thing should be made, where it should be sent, and how much it should be sold for.

Attempts to "plan" the economy – say, by subsidizing industries or limiting prices – may be well-intentioned, but they broke the market's computations and produced haywire swings of both over- and underproduction. Later, the USSR's planned economy did encounter these swings. These were sometimes very grave (famines that killed millions) and sometimes silly (periods when the only goods available in regional shops were forks, say, creating local bubbles in folk art made from forks).

Unplanned markets do this too. Most notoriously, capitalism has produced a vast oversupply of carbon-intensive goods and processes, and a huge undersupply of low-carbon alternatives, bringing the human civilization to the brink of collapse. Not only have capitalism's price signals failed to address this existential crisis to humans, it has also sown the seeds of its own ruin – the market computer's not going to be getting any "price signals" from people as they drown in floods or roast to death on sidewalks that deliver second-degree burns to anyone who touches them:

https://www.fastcompany.com/91151209/extreme-heat-southwest-phoenix-surface-burns-scorching-pavement-sidewalks-pets

For market true believers, these failures are just evidence that regulation is distorting markets, and that the answer is more unregulated markets to infuse the computer with more price signals. When it comes to carbon, the problem is that producers are "producing negative externalities" (that is, polluting and sticking us with the bill). If we can just get them to "internalize" those costs, they will become "economically rational" and switch to low-carbon alternatives.

That's the theory behind the creation and sale of carbon credits. Rather than ordering companies to stop risking civilizational collapse and mass extinction, we can incentivize them to do so by creating markets that reward clean tech and punish dirty practices. The buying and selling of carbon credits is supposed to create price signals reflecting the existential risk to the human race and the only habitable planet known to our species, which the market will then "bring into equilibrium."

Unfortunately, reality has a distinct and unfair leftist bias. Carbon credits are a market for lemons. The carbon credits you buy to "offset" your car or flight are apt to come from a forest that has already burned down, or that had already been put in a perpetual trust as a wildlife preserve and could never be logged:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/18/greshams-carbon-law/#papal-indulgences

Carbon credits produce the most perverse outcomes imaginable. For example, much of Tesla's profitability has been derived from the sale of carbon credits to the manufacturers of the dirtiest, most polluting SUVs on Earth; without those Tesla credits, those SUVs would have been too expensive to sell, and would not have existed:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/24/no-puedo-pagar-no-pagara/#Rat

What's more, carbon credits aren't part of an "all of the above" strategy that incorporates direct action to prevent our species downfall. These market solutions are incompatible with muscular direct action, and if we do credits, we can't do other stuff that would actually work:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/31/carbon-upsets/#big-tradeoff

Even though price signals have repeatedly proven themselves to be an insufficient mechanism for producing "efficient" or even "survivable," they remain the uppermost spiritual value in the capitalist pantheon. Even through the last 40 years of unrelenting assaults on antitrust and competition law, the one form of corporate power that has remained both formally and practically prohibited is "pricing power."

That's why the DoJ was able to block tech companies and major movie studios from secretly colluding to suppress their employees' wages, and why those employees were able to get huge sums out of their employers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation

It's also why the Big Six (now Big Five) publishers and Apple got into so much trouble for colluding to set a floor on the price of ebooks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Apple_(2012)

When it comes to monopoly, even the most Bork-pilled, Manne-poisoned federal judges and agencies have taken a hard line on price-fixing, because "distortions" of prices make the market computer crash.

But despite this horror of price distortions, America's monopolists have found so many ways to manipulate prices. Last month, The American Prospect devoted an entire issue to the many ways that monopolies and cartels have rigged the prices we pay, pushing them higher and higher, even as our wages stagnated and credit became more expensive:

https://prospect.org/pricing

For example, there's the plague of junk fees (AKA "drip pricing," or, if you're competing to be first up against the wall come the revolution, "ancillary revenue"), everything from baggage fees from airlines to resort fees at hotels to the fee your landlord charges if you pay your rent by check, or by card, or in cash:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/07/drip-drip-drip/#drip-off

There's the fake transparency gambit, so beloved of America's hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/13/a-punch-in-the-guts/#hayek-pilled

The "greedflation" that saw grocery prices skyrocketing, which billionaire grocery plutes blamed on covid stimulus checks, even as they boasted to their shareholders about their pricing power:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-12-war-in-the-aisles/

There's the the tens of billions the banks rake in with usurious interest rates, far in excess of the hikes to the central banks' prime rates (which are, in turn, justified in light of the supposed excesses of covid relief checks):

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-11-what-we-owe/

There are the scams that companies like Amazon pull with their user interfaces, tricking you into signing up for subscriptions or upsells, which they grandiosely term "dark patterns," but which are really just open fraud:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-10-one-click-economy/

There are "surge fees," which are supposed to tempt more producers (e.g. Uber drivers) into the market when demand is high, but which are really just an excuse to gouge you – like when Wendy's threatens to surge-price its hamburgers:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-07-urge-to-surge/

And then there's surveillance pricing, the most insidious and profitable way to jack up prices. At its core, surveillance pricing uses nonconsensually harvested private information to inform an algorithm that reprices the things you buy – from lattes to rent – in real-time:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

Companies like Plexure – partially owned by McDonald's – boasts that it can use surveillance data to figure out what your payday is and then hike the price of the breakfast sandwich or after-work soda you buy every day.

Like every bad pricing practice, surveillance pricing has its origins in the aviation industry, which invested early on and heavily in spying on fliers to figure out how much they could each afford for their plane tickets and jacking up prices accordingly. Architects of these systems then went on to found companies like Realpage, a data-brokerage that helps landlords illegally collude to rig rent prices.

Algorithmic middlemen like Realpage and ATPCO – which coordinates price-fixing among the airlines – are what Dan Davies calls "accountability sinks." A cartel sends all its data to a separate third party, which then compares those prices and tells everyone how much to jack them up in order to screw us all:

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

These price-fixing middlemen are everywhere, and they predate the boom in commercial surveillance. For example, Agri-Stats has been helping meatpackers rig the price of meat for 40 years:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

But when you add commercial surveillance to algorithmic pricing, you get a hybrid more terrifying than any cocaine-sharks (or, indeed, meth-gators):

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tennessee-police-warn-locals-not-flush-drugs-fear-meth-gators-n1030291

Apologists for these meth-gators insist that surveillance pricing's true purpose is to let companies offer discounts. A streaming service can't afford to offer $0.99 subscriptions to the poor because then all the rich people would stop paying $19.99. But with surveillance pricing, every customer gets a different price, titrated to their capacity to pay, and everyone wins.

But that's not how it cashes out in the real world. In the real world, rich people who get ripped off have the wherewithal to shop around, complain effectively to a state AG, or punish companies by taking their business elsewhere. Meanwhile, poor people aren't just cash-poor, they're also time-poor and political influence-poor.

When the dollar store duopoly forces all the mom-and-pop grocers in your town out of business with predatory pricing, and creating food deserts that only they serve, no one cares, because state AGs and politicians don't care about people who shop at dollar stores. Then, the dollar stores can collude with manufacturers to get shrunken "cheater sized" products that sell for a dollar, but cost double or triple the grocery store price by weight or quantity:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes

Yes, fliers who seem to be flying on business (last-minute purchasers who don't have a Saturday stay) get charged more than people whose purchase makes them seem to be someone flying away for a vacation. But that's only because aviation prices haven't yet fully transitioned to surveillance pricing. If an airline can correctly calculate that you are taking a trip because you're a grad student who must attend a conference in order to secure a job, and if they know precisely how much room you have left on your credit card, they can charge you everything you can afford, to the cent.

Your ability to resist pricing power isn't merely a function of a company's market power – it's also a function of your political power. Poor people may have less to steal, but no one cares when they get robbed:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/19/martha-wright-reed/#capitalists-hate-capitalism

So surveillance pricing, supercharged by algorithms, represent a serious threat to "prices," which is the one thing that the econo-religious fundamentalists of the capitalist class value above all else. That makes surveillance pricing low-hanging fruit for regulatory enforcement: a bipartisan crime that has few champions on either side of the aisle.

Cannily, the FTC has just declared war on surveillance pricing, ordering eight key players in the industry (including capitalism's arch-villains, McKinsey and Jpmorgan Chase) to turn over data that can be used to prosecute them for price-fixing within 45 days:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/07/ftc-issues-orders-eight-companies-seeking-information-surveillance-pricing

As American Prospect editor-in-chief David Dayen notes in his article on the order, the FTC is doing what he and his journalistic partners couldn't: forcing these companies to cough up internal data:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-07-24-ftc-opens-surveillance-pricing-inquiry/

This is important, and not just because of the wriggly critters the FTC will reveal as they use their powers to turn over this rock. Administrative agencies can't just do whatever they want. Long before the agencies were neutered by the Supreme Court, they had strict rules requiring them to gather evidence, solicit comment and counter-comment, and so on, before enacting any rules:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

Doubtless, the Supreme Court's Loper decision (which overturned "Chevron deference" and cut off the agencies' power to take actions that they don't have detailed, specific authorization to take) will embolden the surveillance pricing industry to take the FTC to court on this. It's hard to say whether the courts will find in the FTC's favor. Section 6(b) of the FTC Act clearly lets the FTC compel these disclosures as part of an enforcement action, but they can't start an enforcement action until they have evidence, and through the whole history of the FTC, these kinds of orders have been a common prelude to enforcement.

One thing this has going for it is that it is bipartisan: all five FTC commissioners, including both Republicans (including the Republican who votes against everything) voted in favor of it. Price gouging is the kind of easy-to-grasp corporate crime that everyone hates, irrespective of political tendency.

In the Prospect piece on Ticketmaster's pricing scam, Dayen and Groundwork's Lindsay Owens called this the "Age of Recoupment":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/03/aoi-aoi-oh/#concentrated-gains-vast-diffused-losses

For 40 years, neoclassical economics' focus on "consumer welfare" meant that companies could cheat and squeeze their workers and suppliers as hard as they wanted, so long as prices didn't go up. But after 40 years, there's nothing more to squeeze out of workers or suppliers, so it's time for the cartels to recoup by turning on us, their customers.

They believe – perhaps correctly – that they have amassed so much market power through mergers and lobbying that they can cross the single bright line in neoliberal economics' theory of antitrust: price-gouging. No matter how sincere the economics profession's worship of prices might be, it still might not trump companies that are too big to fail and thus too big to jail.

The FTC just took an important step in defense of all of our economic wellbeing, and it's a step that even the most right-wing economist should applaud. They're calling the question: "Do you really think that price-distortion is a cardinal sin? If so, you must back our play." Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

https://clarionwriteathon.com/members/profile.php?writerid=293388

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/24/gouging-the-all-seeing-eye/#i-spy

[jq37]

neme(sis)

Summary: The Rat Grinders actually fight the Bad Kids on the Hangman instead of just sending dragons and Adaine has to do some quick thinking.

"Adaine Abernant."

Adaine winced, clutching her head as Raulothim's Psychic Lance pierced her mind. It figured Oisin knew the spell. Raulothim was a dragon after all. She wondered if he learned it in class like her or if he'd come to school already familiar with the spell because of his dragon ancestor who was currently trying to swallow Gorgug, axe and all. She didn't wonder for too long though. There wasn't time.

"See what you can do with access to proper spell components?" Oisin called from the other side of the room, his tone mocking.

"That spell doesn't even have material components!" Adaine called back in spite of herself. Insulting her was one thing but getting basic spellcraft wrong while doing it? Unacceptable. She ignored his expression, smug from getting a rise out of her no doubt, and surveyed the battlefield. The Rat Grinders had caught them on their back foot. Things were going OK but they were playing defense. And no one was where they needed to be. Spellcasters too close to melee, fighters out of range. Only Gorgug was arguably in the right place but he was far too close to being dragon food for her liking. Fabian needed to be closer to the action, Riz needed cover, and she…

Adaine suppressed a smile, idea forming in her mind. She needed to be in punching distance.

"Scatter," she said, raising a hand. Five creatures: Gorgug, Riz, Fabian, Kristen…and Oisin.

Her party members didn't fight the spell, well used to the feeling of her magic working on them mid-battle and knowing that it never meant harm. As she moved them to more advantageous positions, she was hit with a flash of the future: Oisin resisting the spell. She reached out and nudged fate just a bit. Nearby, Ivy walked dangerously close to a breath weapon attack. Oisin startled, moved to grab her, and--pop. Suddenly, he was standing right next to Adaine who was already rearing her fist.

"Counterspell!" Oisin called, runes on his forearms glowing. The expression on his face was even more smug as the blue energy charging on her fist fizzled.

"Predictable," he said.

"Gullible," Adaine thought, halting her fist without following through on the punch and stomping her foot on the ground to activate the teleportation circle they were both now standing on. Because of course the boy with the empty house and unlimited funds would have a teleportation circle installed so he could have his friends over as often as possible. Teleportation via spell needed a willing creature but a Circle? That just needed proximity.

As the spell went off, she concentrated. The benefit of a teleportation circle was that it couldn't go wrong like a normal Teleport spell could. It wasn't supposed to anyway. But any magic could be tweaked if you pushed hard enough. She remembered winding up in the wrong room in the twisted version of Mordred inside Riz's briefcase and concentrated on that feeling. She was sure she was going to have a headache in the morning but that was more than a fair price. She wrenched control of the spell, just enough to force the circle to spit them out a little bit outside of the paired circle in Mordred. There was a flash of light and--forget having a headache tomorrow. Her head felt like it had been bashed in with a pickaxe the moment they landed on the floor of her bedroom. She didn't think she'd be able to get back up for a minute or two--she didn't even try. Oisin didn't seem to have that problem though. He got up and stood over her.

He smirked. "I thought the elven oracle was supposed to be more of a challenge. I knew we'd come out on top but I didn't think it'd be so easy." He raised his hands, readying a spell, but the sparks at his clawtips died as quickly as they were produced. He tried the spell again to the same result, too focused to notice the sudden subtle sheen to the patterns painted on her bedroom walls.

A Sending spell pinged in her mind. "Ten seconds, dear sister."

A smile played on Adaine's lips.

"What?" Oisin demanded.

"Just that you all have been so obsessed with being our nemeses this whole time. But that was never gonna happen with you and me. That position is already filled."

There was another flash of light and before it even cleared, Adaine felt the tingle of magic settling over her like a second skin. Her sister's abjurer's ward extending to cover her reflexively. Just beyond the ward, she could feel the temperature in the room start to drop--a side effect of the Cone of Cold that was about to erupt from Aelwyn's outstretched hands.

"You're familiar with my bitch of a sister, right?"

[ravnicacardsconverted]

Price of Betrayal

6th-level Necromancy Casting Time: 1 hour Range: Touch Components: V S M (a gold-tip angel-wing quill (See text), A willing Humanoid) Duration: Until Dispelled Classes: Warlock

Description: You scrawl a unique pattern of dark magic on the target's skin using the gold-tip angel-wing quill. After the intricate pattern is drawn the spell activates, searing magical scars across the target's body. this process deals half of the target's maximum hitpoints as necrotic damage.

From then on until this spell is dispelled whenever that creature would make an attack action towards you or targets you with a harmful spell the target is immanently dealt half of their current hitpoints rounded up, in the form of necrotic damage. if this damage would reduce the creature to 0 hitpoints that creature immanently dies and their soul is transferred to into the quill. Imprisoned within.

If the quill used to cast this spell is destroyed the spell immanently ends. if a soul is trapped within the quill the spirit is released but the creature is not resurrected.

Join the Ravnica Cards Converted Discord and come hang out here https://discord.gg/PydYEEY

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To contact me directly for commision info please contact me her on tumblr.

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[zxxyue]

Gakushū's Business Acumen: Class 3-A's Event Cafe

Analyzing Gakushu's school festival business plan from a comprehensive finance and psychological perspective reveals several key strengths and potential risks. I'll delve into the intricacies of the revenue model, cost structure, operational efficiency, and psychological tactics for a nuanced understanding of his business strategy and its implications. (This may get wordy.)

The event cafe's primary revenue source is the 500 yen entrance fee, which provides attendees with free food, drinks, and access to performances. This model banks on repeat visits, assuming high engagement levels. The psychological underpinning here is the ‘fear of missing out’ (FOMO), as events are scheduled at one-hour intervals, creating urgency and encouraging multiple payments.

Examining the cost structure, Gakushu’s reliance on free performances by pop stars pals and comedian buddies significantly cuts entertainment expenses. This cost-saving measure, however, hinges on personal relationships, posing sustainability risks. If these relationships wane or if performers seek compensation in the future, it could disrupt the cost structure. Since this is a fictional case scenario, I'm going with the possibility that Gakushu's network can be relied on.

The endorsement deal with Suzume Izakaya food services provides substantial financial support and in-kind contributions. This sponsorship not only reduces operational costs but also enhances the festival’s credibility, as Suzume Izakaya’s brand reputation can attract more visitors who trust the quality of the food and beverages.

Offering free food and drinks is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it is an attractive feature that can draw a large number of attendees, enhancing perceived value and satisfaction. On the other hand, it presents a significant cost burden. Effective inventory management and supplier negotiations are crucial to balance cost and supply. There is also a risk of overconsumption, which must be managed to avoid resource depletion.

Operational efficiency is another critical component of Gakushu's plan. Organizing events at one-hour intervals on different stages maximizes space and time utilization, keeping the audience engaged and minimizing downtime. This continuous engagement strategy ensures that attendees are constantly entertained, increasing the likelihood of repeat entrance fee payments. The immediate start of subsequent events also helps maintain a steady flow of visitors, reducing congestion and enhancing the overall customer experience.

Psychologically, the one-hour event intervals create a sense of urgency and scarcity, compelling attendees to make quick decisions to attend multiple events. This tactic leverages the psychological principle that limited availability increases perceived value, driving higher engagement and repeat visits.

The use of celebrity performances taps into social proof and authority. Featuring well-known pop stars and comedians draws their fan bases and generates buzz, enhancing the festival’s attractiveness. This social influence can significantly boost attendance, as people tend to follow the actions of those they admire. The endorsement by Suzume Izakaya also adds an element of authority and trust, reassuring attendees about the quality and safety of the festival’s offerings.

The all-inclusive 500 yen entrance fee creates a high perceived value, making attendees feel they are getting a good deal. This pricing strategy increases their willingness to pay, especially when considering the continuous entertainment and free provisions. The plan also aims to foster customer loyalty by ensuring a captivating experience that encourages repeat visits.

Quoting what the Virtuosos said, such a complex and multifaceted plan is particularly challenging for a third-year junior high student. The management skills required to coordinate performances, manage resources, negotiate partnerships, and ensure operational efficiency are significant. Gakushu’s ability to pull off this plan and win the school festival showcases exceptional organizational and leadership skills. This ability to leverage personal networks and psychological principles to drive engagement and revenue are commendable. Successfully managing such a demanding project at 15 could be foreshadowing of his future as an executive when he started a business in Silicon Valley after receiving an MBA at MIT.

[rjzimmerman]

The Clean Energy Revolution Is Unstoppable. (Wall Street Journal)

Surprising essay published by the Wall Street Journal. Actually, two surprises. The first is an assertion that the fossil fuel industry is parading to its death, regardless of the current trump mania, while the renewables industry is marching toward success due to dramatic decreases in cost. The second surprise is that the essay is published in the Wall Street Journal, which we all know can be a biblical equivalent for the right wing. But be careful with that right wing label: today's right wing (e.g., MAGA) or the traditional conservative republican right wing, which is more aligned with saving money and making money and avoiding political headwinds.

Here's the entire essay. I rarely post a complete essay, but this one made me happy and feel good, and right now I/we damn well need to learn something to make us happy and feel good.

Since Donald Trump’s election, clean energy stocks have plummeted, major banks have pulled out of a U.N.-sponsored “net zero” climate alliance, and BP announced it is spinning off its offshore wind business to refocus on oil and gas. Markets and companies seem to be betting that Trump’s promises to stop or reverse the clean energy transition and “drill, baby, drill” will be successful.

But this bet is wrong. The clean energy revolution is being driven by fundamental technological and economic forces that are too strong to stop. Trump’s policies can marginally slow progress in the U.S. and harm the competitiveness of American companies, but they cannot halt the fundamental dynamics of technological change or save a fossil fuel industry that will inevitably shrink dramatically in the next two decades.

Our research shows that once new technologies become established their patterns in terms of cost are surprisingly predictable. They generally follow one of three patterns.

The first is a pattern where costs are volatile over days, months and years but relatively flat over longer time frames. It applies to resources extracted from the earth, like minerals and fossil fuels. The price of oil, for instance, fluctuates in response to economic and political events such as recessions, OPEC actions or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But coal, oil and natural gas cost roughly the same today as they did a century ago, adjusted for inflation. One reason is that even though the technology for extracting fossil fuels improves over time, the resources get harder and harder to extract as the quality of deposits declines.

There is a second group of technologies whose costs are also largely flat over time. For example, hydropower, whose technology can’t be mass produced because each dam is different, now costs about the same as it did 50 years ago. Nuclear power costs have also been relatively flat globally since its first commercial use in 1956, although in the U.S. nuclear costs have increased by about a factor of three. The reasons for U.S. cost increases include a lack of standardized designs, growing construction costs, increased regulatory burdens, supply-chain constraints and worker shortages.

A third group of technologies experience predictable long-term declines in cost and increases in performance. Computer processors are the classic example. In 1965, Gordon Moore, then the head of Intel, noticed that the density of electrical components in integrated circuits was growing at a rate of about 40% a year. He predicted this trend would continue, and Moore’s Law has held true for 60 years, enabling companies and investors to accurately forecast the cost and speed of computers many decades ahead.

Clean energy technologies such as solar, wind and batteries all follow this pattern but at different rates. Since 1990, the cost of wind power has dropped by about 4% a year, solar energy by 12% a year and lithium-ion batteries by about 12% a year. Like semiconductors, each of these technologies can be mass produced. They also benefit from advances and economies of scale in related sectors: solar photovoltaic systems from semiconductor manufacturing, wind from aerospace and batteries from consumer electronics.

Solar energy is 10,000 times cheaper today than when it was first used in the U.S.’s Vanguard satellite in 1958. Using a measure of cost that accounts for reliability and flexibility on the grid, the International Energy Agency (IEA) calculates that electricity from solar power with battery storage is less expensive today than electricity from new coal-fired plants in India and new gas-fired plants in the U.S. We project that by 2050 solar energy will cost a tenth of what it does today, making it far cheaper than any other source of energy. 

At the same time, barriers to large-scale clean energy use keep tumbling, thanks to advances in energy storage and better grid and demand management. And innovations are enabling the electrification of industrial processes with enormous efficiency gains.

The falling price of clean energy has accelerated its adoption. The growth of new technologies, from railroads to mobile phones, follows what is called an S-curve. When a technology is new, it grows exponentially, but its share is tiny, so in absolute terms its growth looks almost flat. As exponential growth continues, however, its share suddenly becomes large, making its absolute growth large too, until the market eventually becomes saturated and growth starts to flatten. The result is an S-shaped adoption curve.

The energy provided by solar has been growing by about 30% a year for several decades. In theory, if this rate continues for just one more decade, solar power with battery storage could supply all the world’s energy needs by about 2035. In reality, growth will probably slow down as the technology reaches the saturation phase in its S-curve. Still, based on historical growth and its likely S-curve pattern, we can predict that renewables, along with pre-existing hydropower and nuclear power, will largely displace fossil fuels by about 2050.

For decades the IEA and others have consistently overestimated the future costs of renewable energy and underestimated future rates of deployment, often by orders of magnitude. The underlying problem is a lack of awareness that technological change is not linear but exponential: A new technology is small for a long time, and then it suddenly takes over. In 2000, about 95% of American households had a landline telephone. Few would have forecast that by 2023, 75% of U.S. adults would have no landline, only a mobile phone. In just two decades, a massive, century-old industry virtually disappeared.

If all of this is true, is there any need for government support for clean energy? Many believe that we should just let the free market alone sort out which energy sources are best. But that would be a mistake. 

History shows that technology transitions often need a kick-start from government. This can take the form of support for basic and high-risk research, purchases that help new technologies reach scale, investment in infrastructure and policies that create stability for private capital. Such government actions have played a critical role in virtually every technological transition, from railroads to automobiles to the internet.

In 2021-22, Congress passed the bipartisan CHIPS Act and Infrastructure Act, plus the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), all of which provided significant funding to accelerate the development of the America’s clean energy industry. Trump has pledged to end that support. The new administration has halted disbursements of $50 billion in already approved clean energy loans and put $280 billion in loan requests under review.

The legality of halting a congressionally mandated program will be challenged in court, but in any case, the IRA horse is well on its way out of the barn. About $61 billion of direct IRA funding has already been spent. IRA tax credits have already attracted $215 billion in new clean energy investment and could be worth $350 billion over the next three years.

Ending the tax credits would be politically difficult, since the top 10 states for clean energy jobs include Texas, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania—all critical states for Republicans. Trump may find himself fighting Republican governors and members of Congress to make those cuts.

It is more likely that Trump and Congress will take actions that are politically easier, such as ending consumer subsidies for electric vehicles or refusing to issue permits for offshore wind projects. The impact of these policy changes would be mainly to harm U.S. competitiveness. By reducing support for private investment and public infrastructure, raising hurdles for permits and slapping on tariffs, the U.S. will simply drive clean-energy investment to competitors in Europe and China.

Meanwhile, Trump’s promises of a fossil fuel renaissance ring hollow. U.S. oil and gas production is already at record levels, and with softening global prices, producers and investors are increasingly cautious about committing capital to expand U.S. production.

The energy transition is a one-way ticket. As the asset base shifts to clean energy technologies, large segments of fossil fuel demand will permanently disappear. Very few consumers who buy an electric vehicle will go back to fossil-fuel cars. Once utilities build cheap renewables and storage, they won’t go back to expensive coal plants. If the S-curves of clean energy continue on their paths, the fossil fuel sector will likely shrink to a niche industry supplying petrochemicals for plastics by around 2050.

For U.S. policymakers, supporting clean energy isn’t about climate change. It is about maintaining American economic leadership. The U.S. invented most clean-energy technologies and has world-beating capabilities in them. Thanks to smart policies and a risk-taking private sector, it has led every major technological transition of the 20th century. It should lead this one too.

[baldy-wan-kenobi]

Mech setting lore: Tin Soldiers

Tin soldiers, or Tinmen, is a derogatory term for the mercenaries now common in the False Peace, piloting Generation Two Frames in the service of whoever has the scratch to pay them.

they are soldiers of fortune, always in search of the next score, and rarely loyal to anything but their pocketbook. However, they are rarely a solo act, usually working in small teams, to maximize their effectiveness as a combat force. While Solo Tinmen aren't unheard of, it's said that only the exceptionally skilled or the exceptionally stupid walk that road, and there's a great deal more of one than the other.

Tinmen are supplied and maintenenced by engineers known as Steelmongers, who will fix, service, buy, and sell Frame parts, making them the best friend of many a Tin Soldier.

Tinmen will usually get their jobs from a Broker, middlemen and fixers who connect potential clients with Tinmen, as well as handling contract negotiations. These jobs take on three main types, and many groups of Tinmen will specialize in one or another, honing their skills in a particular area:

Explorator missions see the Tinmen contracted as hired muscle, usually for a corporation or city-state, to escort one of their Explorator Teams to find and loot an Old World site, with the goal of finding Old World Tech hidden within. The mercenaries are a necessary component of this operation, thanks to the advanced, self-repairing automated defenses of the Old World Installations, wielding fearsome weaponry from a forgotten time. While such contracts can be quite lucrative, their true value is in salvage rights, enabling Tinmen to lay claim to technology and materials they find in the Installations, often powerful weapons or impressive frame parts that can be used on their own mechs or sold to a Steelmonger for exorbitant prices.

Proxy missions are the second type of contract, where Tin Soldiers are hired as irregular military forces, sent to fight in deniable skirmishes with other mercenaries hired by other powers. This style of warfare is necessary in the time of the False Peace, as any open war between corporations or city-states would be met with a full onslaught from the Knights of Svalbard, a confrontation which no power on earth can afford.

The third type of mission are Defense contracts, where Tinmen are hired to defend an Independent settlement or City-State from Raider Forces or an Automaton Attack, where automated forces from an Old World Installation act on ancient directives to attack local settlements and assault City-state forces.

Despite the general animosity towards them, many Tinmen come to be viewed as celebrities, after a fashion, with tales of their exploits told and retold time and time again, some even gaining genuine fans, willing to put themselves in harm's way to see their heroes in action.

[mariacallous]

Hang onto your stuff. That’s the advice right-to-repair advocates are giving anyone worried about how the tariffs will hit their wallets—and collections of electronic gadgets.

Trade tariffs touch nearly every product, especially when they’re as widespread and sky-high as the ones president Trump announced on April 3. But electronics are especially dependent on worldwide trade. Components used to assemble devices are usually built in manufacturing plants in countries like China, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Cambodia, which are now being hit with tariffs of 30 to 50 percent.

While the price increases as a result of this have not yet gone into effect—and are difficult to fully predict—these economic proclamations have already had broad repercussions. The stock market tanked in the days after Trump's announcement due to “extreme fear” in the market, according to CNN, and there have already been delays while companies assess the tariff impact, like the preorder for the recently announced Nintendo Switch 2.

The economic turmoil and uncertainty make the prospect of buying a new device, especially an already pricey smartphone, laptop, or gaming console, seem like it’s going to become a lot more expensive. And if buying something new becomes harder and harder, it makes more sense to keep what you already have going strong.

“Right to repair could not have come sooner,” says Kyle Wiens, CEO of the repairability company iFixit.

Right-to-repair efforts—actions by consumer advocates intended to raise public awareness and force companies to make devices more repairable—have been in the works for decades. In recent years, the push has made great strides. In 2024, the European Union instituted a ruling that requires companies to make devices more repairable. The right to repair has also garnered widespread bipartisan support in the US, even while in the throes of a chaotic federal administration that seems intent on dismantling many of the systems that keep the country running.

Wiens compares the moment to the early days of the Covid pandemic, a time when the future of how people would be able to get the new stuff they wanted looked similarly bleak. In 2020, Wiens wrote for WIRED that the right to repair would help foster resilience in times of uncertainty. As tariffs kick in and a global trade war ignites, the parallels start to feel very similar.

“We don't know what's going to happen,” Wiens says. “So what do we do? Well, repair is just the default.”

Wiens suggests that people should prepare for new device prices to increase by 50 percent or more. If you apply that same logic to the stuff you already have, it means that hanging onto your smartphone or laptop for another couple of years may be a much better investment then trading it in for something new.

"Just expect to keep anything that you have that's durable in any way,” Wiens says. “So durable goods—microwaves, toasters, cell phones, Nintendo Switches, whatever it is, they’re worth 50 percent more now than you thought they were.”

The tariff era will require a shift in how products are produced and reduced. Wiens says he has also been talking to workers at electronics recycling facilities and telling them not to harvest discarded products if they’re still working.

“Hey, whatever you are going to shred, stop shredding it,” Wiens says. “Whatever materials you're going to export, stop exporting it. That product's going to have more value than you thought.”

Despite the doom and gloom that watching the stock market plummet might invoke in our collective psyche, right-to-repair advocates hope this moment helps make the case for keeping devices in working order.

“I don’t feel like the sky is falling,” says Nathan Proctor, who helms the campaign for the right to repair at the consumer advocacy group PIRG. “First of all, Wall Street people are the 13-year-old girls of social commentary. Everything is total drama all the time. Let's not go overboard. Let's see how this plays out.”

Like Wiens, Proctor believes that repair makes society more resilient and will help people get through this where it can.

“It's going to be very disruptive in the short term,” Proctor says. “I'm not sure how long that's going to last or what the impact's going to be. But I do know that a more resilient society is better.”

Leo Gebbie, a principal analyst at the research firm CCS Insights says that another segment of the market that could benefit from higher tariffs are secondhand markets that sell used devices, like Backmarket. They’ve been doing quite well even before the tariffs were announced, with secondhand devices frequently bought and sold within the US. Now, that popularity is likely to increase.

“They are more cost-effective,” Gebbie says. “There is a strong supply of secondhand iPhones within the US, so for US consumers there shouldn't be a need to import those devices from elsewhere and have them subject to tariffs.”

Backmarket in particular seems to be well aware of its place in this trend, as right now it is cheekily offering a Recession Special where customers can use a code (ELON) to save 10 percent on their purchase. However, if demand for secondhand devices goes up, there could be a knock-on effect where more phones being sold in the US could lead to prices being raised across the board—including in European markets that have tended to have stronger demand for used devices than the US.

“Really we will [only] know more once we see prices change,” Gebbie says. “Obviously consumers are then in a position where they have something to react to.”

Rethinking how we repair and replace our devices already has an analogue for how to guide that behavior. The automotive industry (which is bound to feel its own impacts from the tariffs) offers an example of how to care for products long term.

“Do people buy new cars? Sure,” Wiens says. “Do they keep cars for 20 years? Absolutely. Yeah. Does anyone throw away a car because the windshield's broken? No.”

Sadly, even the repair side of things is bound to feel the effects of tariff inflation. Spare parts and tools needed to fix things depend on global manufactures as much as finished products do. Wiens, who runs a business that sells tools meant for repairing devices, says he will also directly feel the effects of the tariffs and be forced to pass the increased cost onto customers. Even then, he hopes that a silver lining in the tariff chaos will be consumers changing their buying habits.

“Let's stop buying cheap crap. Let's have fewer, nicer things, and let's use them for a long time,” Wiens says. “And so then you say, well, if we're going to stop buying new things, what do we do with the stuff? How do we take care of the things that we have? Well, that's where the right-to-repair world comes in."

[felassan]

Some more info on the Mass Effect board game, from co-designer Calvin:

"Hi all, Calvin here, co-designer of the game. I've gathered all the frequently asked questions on social media and bgg and gathered them into some answers for you. Feel free to ask more questions if yours is not answered, and if I can answer it I will. I will be updating this as more information about the game becomes available. Release info - The release date is (hopefully) November depending on the gods of shipping - Price is confirmed, the game will be $50/£40 - The team is currently working on translation deals for 9 or so languages. More details soon. - For info on pre-orders go to https://www.modiphius.net/pages/mass-effect-signup - There are currently no plans for a collector’s edition vs standard edition - It is not crowdfunded, the game is direct to retail - "If you'd like to support the game right now, there's nothing better than going into your local FLGS and asking them if they'll stock the game when it comes out. With the vast amount of great games coming out every week, retailers rely on fans asking about the game. This helps them gauge how much to buy, the more people ask, the more buzz they know there is, the more confident they are to buy enough and the more likely there's one waiting for you on the shelf when you go in :-) That feeds up the chain; the more retailers ask their sales reps at Asmodee, the more Asmodee goes, "Oh wait, let's order more, so we have enough for all the shops". Plot - The game is set on the planet Hagalaz, early during the events of Mass Effect 3 - The players are tasked with investigating a crashed Cerberus research cruiser which could have info that contributes to War Readiness and could help stop the Reapers - The game is designed so people who have never played Mass Effect can still enjoy it. Eric hasn't played the games as much as I did so he got to do what he calls “the meathead test” on all the theming and story. - We worked with Bioware on all the plot and theming. - Yes you can do calibrations in this game Basic game info - Co-operative squad tactics - 1-4 players - Included are six 32mm minis, masc Shep, fem Shep, Liara, Garrus, Tali, and Wrex - Not many other components to keep price and complexity low - 45 minute missions - 3-5 missions per campaign - Branching paragon/renegade choices + sidequests - Enough missions to replay the campaign several times without repeats - Solo play is really fun, in fact I like all the player counts equally, which is something I’m very proud that we were able to achieve in this game - Solo play is basically multi-handing, you control more than one character. - There is no legacy aspect, the game is fully resettable - There will be new original art"

[character limit text break]

"Gameplay info - Low rules complexity, but with lots of tactical depth. We aimed for an audience of Mass Effect fans who might not know anything about board games. Board gamers should still find something to enjoy if they’re into co-op tactics. - A group that just wants to turn their brain off and blast through the game should have an easy time - But a group who wants to get the best endings, complete all the sidequests, get all the level ups will have to min-max pretty heavily - The game has relatively low randomness. Planning, prediction, and preparation are very important to avoid bad outcomes - but there’s still enough randomness to avoid AP as players try to plan out perfect turns. - Important gameplay elements include positioning and combo-ing abilities with other players. - There is a tactical map. - Players will level up their characters by performing in game actions and learn new abilities. - We got all 6 Shepard classes in there. It is one of the things I am very proud of doing. - Re: alpha gamers, Eric and I do not believe it is the designer’s job to solve for jerks at your gaming table. Obviously we have designed the game so that every player has something to contribute and there’s plenty of info so that it’s hard to track. But we also recommend having adult conversations with your table partners. Interviews/Behind The Scenes Beyond Solitaire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-nLGDt97i4 Topics: how we designed the game and implemented the narrative UKGE promo copy https://twitter.com/Modiphius/status/1796844231018811782/" Post last updated August 8th

[source]

New original art 👀

[grepepkin]

Very much interested in Ghost and Price's dynamic.

They have a strong sort of trust. Ghost isn't a rabid animal by any means, but he's strong, and he's independent; he can handle himself just fine, and leads his men well enough. But he's a man most accustomed to violence (as most are in the military, eventually). In '09, it's generally accepted that he has anger issues. In '22, I find it easy to characterize him as a man torn away from himself in such harsh ways that he can't function like he used to. The mask is a huge component into that. He's no live wire, but he's almost a weapon. He's good at what he does; a great marksman, a great leader, a great soldier. His blade was sharpend first by his father, and then again by the military, and again by Roba. He can fight to kill, fight to win, fight until his mission is over.

And Price can - not exactly "reign him in," but at least redirect Simon. Price, with his silent observations and his careful planning and his leadership. He doesn't doubt Simon Riley's skills in the slightest. He probably knew Simon from the pre-Roba days, or was at least close enough with him afterwards to see his face. Simon trusts him almost blindly; Simon rushes to Price's aid when the helicopter crashes, while Soap and Rudy push on. It's an undying loyalty, in a way. Simon will forget the mission, something it seems he cannot live without, to assist Price. "Actions have consequences" is one of the first statements Simon makes in '22, after clearing a crash site. It almost seems like he regrets it, as Soap points out in that scene. And yet, only a few (days? weeks?) later, Simon once again pushes the mission back to do what he seemed to regret doing before. He does it for Price. Not to use an overused metaphor, but it's like a dog and his owner.

[appleceoleadershipstyles]

[Apple,Inc.] Leadership Styles

[Juaneishia]

What makes a leader strategic and innovative? There are components that allow a leader to take over the skills of being strategic and innovative. To have the inclination for long-term success, competitive advantage, problem-solving mindset, adaptability to change, and passion for impact, personal growth, etc. What makes a leader possess dysfunctional behavior? The ingredients are insecurity, ego, greed, inability to delegate, the list is endless but not satisfactory for the company or the employees. As we dive into the different leadership traits of the CEOs of Apple, we will learn the dos and don’ts of being a leader. You will be able to identify what type of leader you want to be for your business or personal growth based on the styles that were depicted by each CEO. Using strategies and innovation will cause challenges to arise; this is normal. “Strategic thinkers question the status quo. They challenge their own and others’ assumptions and encourage divergent points of view. Only after careful reflection and examination of a problem through many lenses do they take decisive action. This requires patience, courage, and an open mind. (Schoemaker, Krupp, Howland, 2013). Dysfunctional leadership is very unprofessional. “Unprofessional behavior can cause discomfort among team members, and it can undermine the leader’s credibility and authority.” (Blog).

Apple, Inc.

Founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne as a partnership, Apple started in the garage of the Jobs family home. Apple would move over the next half century to become one of the largest and most successful tech companies in the world. The first product developed by Jobs and Wozniak was the Apple I computer and according to Wikipedia (2020) was “sold as a motherboard with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips—a base kit concept which was not yet marketed as a complete personal computer.” In 1977, after creating the Apple I computer, Apple became an incorporated company in Cupertino, California. By the time apple had become an incorporation, Wayne had sold his shares back to Jobs and Wozniak. (Richardson, 2023).

After several product successes in 1977, including Apple II and MacIntosh computers, Apple faced trouble in the market. Wintel offered lower-priced PC clones that were operated on Intel software systems. Through this trouble, Apple was faced with bankruptcy. During the challenge of facing bankruptcy, Jobs repaired the failed operating system’s issues and developed new products including iPod, iMac, iPhone, and iPad allowing the company to perform a complete 360 by 1978. (2020).

Apple, after its start, went through a few short-term CEO’s. While the more prominent leaders remain to be Jobs, Wozniak, and Tim Cook, a collaborative modern-aged leader, it is important to acknowledge the role that others had played and how it affected the company and its vision. (2023).

Today, Apple has evolved to offer full-service technology in many varieties. Apple technology now includes headwear, watches, Augmented Reality (AR), streaming and subscription services, music, and more (2025). Apple has effectively adapted to the demand of the consumer through a technological revolution.

References

Schoemaker, P J. H. Krupp, S. Howland, S. (2013, January -February) Strategic Leadership: The Essential Skills. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2013/01/strategic-leadership-the-esssential-skills

Blog. The Top 5 Dysfunctional Behaviors That Leaders Should Avoid. Lolly Daskal. https://www.lollydaskal.com/leadership/the-top-5-dysfunctional-behaviors-that-leaders-should-avoid/

Wikipedia. (2024). Apple Inc. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.

‌ Richardson, A. (2023). The founding of Apple Computer, Inc. Library of Congress. https://guides.loc.gov/this-month-in-business-history/april/apple-computer-founded

Muse, T. (2023, November 27). Apple’s CEO History. Www.historyoasis.com. https://www.historyoasis.com/post/apple-ceo-history

Apple. (2025). Apple. https://www.apple.com/

[notwiselybuttoowell]

Donald Trump’s upending of the global economy has raised fears that climate action could emerge as a casualty of the trade war.

In the week that has followed “liberation day”, economic experts have warned that the swathe of tariffs could trigger a global economic recession, with far-reaching consequences for investors – including those behind the green energy projects needed to meet climate goals.

Fears of a prolonged global recession have also tanked oil and gas prices, making it cheaper to pollute and more difficult to justify investment in clean alternatives such as electric vehicles and low-carbon heating to financially hard-hit households.

But chief among the concerns is Trump’s decision to level his most aggressive trade tariffs against China – the world’s largest manufacturer of clean energy technologies – which threatens to throttle green investment in the US, the world’s second-largest carbon-emitter.

The US is expected to lag farther behind the rest of the world in developing clean power technologies by cutting off its access to cheap, clean energy tech developed in China. This is a fresh blow to green energy developers in the US, still reeling from the Trump administration’s vow to roll back the Biden era’s green incentives.

Leslie Abrahams, a deputy director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC, said the tariffs would probably hinder the rollout of clean energy in the US and push the country to the margins of the global market.

Specifically, they are expected to drive up the price of developing clean power, because to date the US has been heavily reliant on importing clean power technologies. “And not just imports of the final goods. Even the manufacturing that we do in the United States relies on imported components,” she said.

The US government’s goal to develop its manufacturing base by opening new factories could make these components available domestically, but it is likely to take time. It will also come at considerable cost, because the materials typically imported to build these factories – cement, steel, aluminium – will be subject to tariffs too, Abrahams said.

“At the same time there are broader, global economic implications that might make it difficult to access inexpensive capital to build,” she added. Investors who had previously shown an interest in the US under the green-friendly Biden administration are likely to balk at the aggressively anti-green messages from the White House.

Abrahams said this would mean a weaker appetite for investment in rolling out green projects across the US, and in the research and development of early-stage clean technologies of the future. This is likely to have long-term implications for the US position in the global green energy market, meaning it will “cede some of our potential market share abroad”, Abrahams added.

It’s important to distinguish between the US and the rest of the world, according to Kingsmill Bond, a strategist for the energy thinktank Ember.

“The more the US cuts itself off from the rest of the world, the more the rest of the world will get on with things and the US will be left behind. This is a tragedy for the clean energy industry in the US, but for everyone else there are opportunities,” he said.

Analysis by the climate campaign group 350.org has found that despite rising costs and falling green investment in the US, Trump’s trade war will not affect the energy transition and renewables trade globally.

One senior executive at a big European renewable energy company said developers were likely to press on with existing US projects but in future would probablyinvest in other markets.

“So we won’t be doing less, we’ll just be going somewhere else,” said the executive, who asked not to be named. “There is no shortage of demand for clean energy projects globally, so we’re not scaling back our ambitions. And excluding the US could make stretched supply chains easier to manage.”

Countries likely to benefit from the fresh attention of renewable energy investors include burgeoning markets in south-east Asia, where fossil fuel reliance remains high and demand for energy is rocketing. Australia and Brazil have also emerged as countries that stand to gain.

The challenge for governments hoping to seize the opportunity provided by the US green retreat will be to assure rattled investors that they offer a safe place to invest in the climate agenda.

Although the green investment slowdown may be largely limited to the US, this still poses concerns for global climate progress, according to Marina Domingues, the head of new energies for the consultancy Rystad Energy.

“The US is a huge emitter country. So everything the US does still really matters to the global energy transition and how we account for CO2,” she said. The US is the second most polluting country in the world, behind China, which produces almost three times its carbon emissions. But the US’s green retreat comes at a time when the country was planning to substantially increase its domestic energy demand.

After years of relatively steady energy demand, Rystad predicts a 10% growth in US electricity consumption from a boom in AI datacentres alone. The economy is also likely to require more energy to power an increase in domestic manufacturing as imports from China dwindle.

In the absence of a growing energy industry, this is likely to come from fossil fuels, meaning growing climate emissions. The US is expected to make use of its abundance of shale gas, but it is planning to use more coal in the future too.

In the same week that Trump set out his tariffs, he signed four executive orders aimed at preventing the US from phasing out coal, in what climate campaigners at 350.org described as an “abuse of power”.

Anne Jellema, the group’s executive director, said: “President Trump’s latest attempt to force-feed coal to the US is a dangerous fantasy that endangers our health, our economy and our future.”

[theonlythingtheyfearistruth]

WHY DYSTOPIA MUST BE BORING TO SUCCEED

The "Boring Dystopia Strategy" is a highly strategic and often subtle method employed by those in power to create an enduring, all-encompassing authoritarian government. The genius of this approach is that it doesn't look like a dystopia at first glance. Each step toward oppression is disguised as a necessary solution to a societal problem, creating a series of small, unassuming changes that collectively transform society into a high-surveillance, debt-ridden, and highly regulated landscape. The result is a quiet but relentless march towards a government structure that controls nearly every aspect of daily life, cloaked in the language of safety, responsibility, and "public good."

Key Components of the Boring Dystopia Strategy

Enhanced Surveillance as Crime Prevention Surveillance systems are marketed as tools to make communities safer. The rationale is straightforward: if there are cameras everywhere, criminals are less likely to act. At first, this seems like a good idea. However, as surveillance expands, it reaches a point where privacy no longer exists—every action and interaction is tracked and recorded. People's movements, purchases, conversations, and even thoughts (through social media and data mining) become data points in a government database. The population is conditioned to accept surveillance under the guise of crime prevention, even though the surveillance network eventually exists to deter any resistance to the growing system of control.

Financial "Disincentives" as a Form of Behavior Control Insurance companies, incentivized by government policies, implement "dynamic" pricing models that penalize risky behavior. Drivers with even minor infractions, young drivers, or anyone with imperfect credit face skyrocketing insurance costs. While it’s presented as a means to reward safe drivers and reduce accidents, it’s ultimately a method of forcing people into line. Over time, these small financial penalties accumulate, and as people find themselves unable to afford the rising costs, they are pushed further into debt or forced to depend on the very government that created the conditions of their hardship.

The Department of Bureaucracy: A Growing Web of Useless Jobs New laws and regulations are introduced to solve every conceivable social issue, resulting in bloated departments filled with superfluous workers whose roles add no real value to society. The justification is often to create jobs and stimulate the economy, but these positions end up creating layers of bureaucracy that slow down meaningful progress. This web of inefficiency puts financial strain on both the government and the people, leading to higher taxes and fees. With each new law or regulation, the cost of compliance grows, straining both businesses and individuals who can't afford to play by an ever-increasing list of rules.

Rising Cost of Living as an Inevitable "Economic Shift" As government regulations add costs to every industry, prices naturally increase. This is explained away as the cost of progress or as an unfortunate byproduct of addressing critical social issues, like "ethical sourcing" or "green initiatives" that are actually revenue-boosters for corporations. As inflation rises and wages stagnate, the lower class is squeezed financially. Each attempt to improve their situation—whether by taking a second job or reducing expenses—is offset by further price increases or surprise taxes. This creates a cycle where economic mobility is nearly impossible, locking the lower class in place.

Debt as a Tool for Control As the cost of living rises, debt becomes unavoidable for many. Loans, credit cards, and financing options are promoted as solutions, pushing people into a system of lifelong debt repayment. With growing financial obligations and little hope of ever breaking free, individuals are forced to work harder, often taking on additional jobs, which leaves them with less time and energy to question or resist the system. Debt chains the population to the very system that oppresses them, creating a sense of dependency on government stability, even as that stability is the source of their financial despair.

The Final Stage: Disempowerment Disguised as "Efficiency"

As the population is weakened by financial strain, endless surveillance, and a tangled bureaucracy, the final stage involves introducing measures to "simplify" governance. This might mean fewer elected officials, streamlined decision-making processes, and the merging of regulatory bodies for "efficiency." In reality, this final stage centralizes power even further, leaving those at the top with almost unchecked authority, a situation that the people, too exhausted and indebted to resist, accept as necessary.

The Boring Dystopia Strategy works because it does not announce itself as an authoritarian takeover. Instead, it subtly shifts the balance of power by presenting every oppressive measure as a solution to a social ill. And because each step is introduced slowly, over decades, the population becomes accustomed to the new reality, accepting surveillance, debt, and regulation as the normal costs of a safe and responsible society. By the time people realize the extent of their powerlessness, the dystopian state is fully entrenched, with every escape route closed off.