#but these are significant now or have been significant in the past

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Academic economists get big payouts when they help monopolists beat antitrust

After 40 years of rampant corporate crime, there's a new sheriff in town: Jonathan Kanter was appointed by Biden to run the DOJ Antitrust Divisoon, and he's overseen 170 "significant antitrust actions" in the past 2.5 years, culminating in a court case where Google was ruled to be an illegal monopolist:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

Kanter's work is both extraordinary and par for the course. As Kanter said in a recent keynote for the Fordham Law Competition Law Institute’s 51st Annual Conference on International Antitrust Law and Policy, we're witnessing an epochal, global resurgence of antitrust:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/assistant-attorney-general-jonathan-kanter-delivers-remarks-fordham-competition-law-0

Kanter's incredible enforcement track record isn't just part of a national trend – his colleagues in the FTC, CFPB and other agencies have also been pursuing an antitrust agenda not seen in generations – but also a worldwide trend. Antitrust enforcers in Canada, the UK, the EU, South Korea, Australia, Japan and even China are all taking aim at smashing corporate monopolies. Not only are they racking up impressive victories against these giant corporations, they're stealing the companies' swagger. After all, the point of enforcement isn't just to punish wrongdoing, but also to deter wrongdoing by others.

Until recently, companies hurled themselves into illegal schemes (mergers, predatory pricing, tying, refusals to deal, etc) without fear or hesitation. Now, many of these habitual offenders are breaking the habit, giving up before they've even tried. Take Wiz, a startup that turned down Google's record-shattering $23b buyout offer, understanding that the attempt would draw more antitrust scrutiny than it was worth:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wiz-turns-down-23-billion-022926296.html

As welcome as this antitrust renaissance is, it prompts an important question: why didn't we enforce antitrust law for the 40 years between Reagan and Biden?

That's what Kanter addresses the majority of his remarks to. The short answer is: crooked academic economists took bribes from monopolists and would-be monopolists to falsify their research on the impacts of monopolists, and made millions (literally – one guy made over $100m at this) testifying that monopolies were good and efficient.

After all, governments aren't just there to enforce rules – they have to make the rules first, and do to that, they need to understand how the world works, so they can understand how to fix the places where it's broken. That's where experts come in, filling regulators' dockets and juries' ears with truthful, factual testimony about their research. Experts can still be wrong, of course, but when the system works well, they're only wrong by accident.

The system doesn't work well. Back in the 1950s, the tobacco industry was threatened by the growing scientific consensus that smoking caused cancer. Industry scientists confirmed this finding. In response, the industry paid statisticians, doctors and scientists to produce deceptive research reports and testimony about the tobacco/cancer link.

The point of this work wasn't necessarily to convince people that tobacco was safe – rather, it was to create the sense that the safety of tobacco was a fundamentally unanswerable question. "Experts disagree," and you're not qualified to figure out who's right and who's wrong, so just stop trying to figure it out and light up.

In other words, Big Tobacco's cancer denial playbook wasn't so much an attack on "the truth" as it was an attack on epistemology – the system by which we figure out what is true and what isn't. The tactic was devastatingly effective. Not only did it allow the tobacco giants to kill millions of people with impunity, it allowed them to reap billions of dollars by doing so.

Since then, epistemology has been under sustained assault. By the 1970s, Big Oil knew that its products would render the Earth unfit for human habitation, and they hired the same companies that had abetted Big Tobacco's mass murder to provide cover for their own slow-motion, planetary scale killing spree.

Time and again, big business has used assaults on epistemology to provide cover for unthinkable crimes. This has given rise to today's epistemological crisis, in which we don't merely disagree about what is true, but (far more importantly) disagree about how the truth can be known:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/25/black-boxes/#when-you-know-you-know

Ask a conspiratorialist why they believe in Qanon or Hatians in Springfield eating pets, and you'll get an extremely vibes-based answer – fundamentally, they believe it because it feels true. As the old saying goes, you can't reason someone out of a belief they didn't reason their way into.

This assault on reason itself is at the core of Kanter's critique. He starts off by listing three cases in which academic economists allowed themselves to be corrupted by the monopolies they studied:

George Mason University tricked an international antitrust enforcer into attending a training seminar that they believed to be affiliated with the US government. It was actually sponsored by the very companies that enforcer was scrutnizing, and featured a parade of "experts" who asserted that these companies were great, actually.

An academic from GMU – which receives substantial tech industry funding – signed an amicus brief opposing an enforcement action against their funders. The academic also presented a defense of these funders to the OECD, all while posing as a neutral academic and not disclosing their funding sources.

An ex-GMU economist, Joshua Wright, submitted a study defending Qualcomm against the FTC, without disclosing that he'd been paid to do so. Wright has elevated undisclosed conflicts of interest to an art form:

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/google-lawyer-secret-weapon-joshua-wright-c98d5a31

Kanter is at pains to point out that these three examples aren't exceptional. The economics profession – whose core tenet is "incentive matter" – has made it standard practice for individual researchers and their academic institutions to take massive sums from giant corporations. Incredibly, they insist that this has nothing to do with their support of monopolies as "efficient."

Academic centers often serve as money-laundries for monopolist funders; researchers can evade disclosure requirements when they publish in journals or testify in court, saying only that they work for some esteemed university, without noting that the university is utterly dependent on money from the companies they're defending.

Now, Kanter is a lawyer, not an academic, and that means that his job is to advocate for positions, and he's at pains to say that he's got nothing but respect for ideological advocacy. What he's objecting to is partisan advocacy dressed up as impartial expertise.

For Kanter, mixing advocacy with expertise doesn't create expert advocacy – it obliterates expertise, as least when it comes to making good policy. This mixing has created a "crisis of expertise…a pervasive breakdown in the distinction between expertise and advocacy in competition policy."

The point of an independent academia, enshrined in the American Association of University Professors' charter, is to "advance knowledge by the unrestricted research and unfettered discussion of impartial investigators." We need an independent academy, because "to be of use to the legislator or the administrator, [an academic] must enjoy their complete confidence in the disinterestedness of [his or her] conclusions."

It's hard to overstate just how much money economists can make by defending monopolies. Writing for The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner gives the rate at $1,000/hour. Monopoly's top defenders make unimaginable sums, like U Chicago's Dennis Carlton, who's brought in over $100m in consulting fees:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-09-24-economists-as-apologists/

The hidden cost of all of this is epistemological consensus. As Tim Harford writes in his 2021 book The Data Detective, the truth can be known through research and peer-review:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford

But when experts deliberately seek to undermine the idea of expertise, they cast laypeople into an epistemological void. We know these questions are important, but we can't trust our corrupted expert institutions. That leaves us with urgent questions – and no answers. That's a terrifying state to be in, and it makes you easy pickings for authoritarian grifters and conspiratorial swindlers.

Seen in this light, Kanter's antitrust work is even more important. In attacking corporate power itself, he is going after the machine that funds this nihilism-inducing corruption machine.

This week, Tor Books published SPILL, a new, free LITTLE BROTHER novella about oil pipelines and indigenous landback!

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/2024/09/25/epistemological-chaos/#incentives-matter

Image: Ron Cogswell (modified) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:George.Mason.University.Arlington.Campus.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[lightseoul]

cw. gn!reader, worker!reader, prohero!katsuki, aged-up (25), pining (again, if you look extra closely), a lot of cussing (are we still surprised)

part 1 (although ig this makes sense on its own)

“What.”

It’s less of a question and more of a statement—a statement sputtered in the typically demanding way characteristic of the one and only Bakugou Katsuki.

The Bakugou Katsuki who happens to be your boss for a good (debatable) three and a half years now, who you also have to spend overtime with until who knows what time to discuss what’s become rocky employee relations in the Dynamight agency.

Your eyebrows furrow in confusion or irrational annoyance—both, really—before you quickly school your expression into a neutral one. You riffle through the documents rather absentmindedly, avoiding his gaze before shooting back with: “What do you mean what?”

“I meant,” he leans back on his office chair that you know he singlehandedly picked out for its superior ergonomic design because he’s meticulous like that, “what the fuck is wrong with your face.”

“Excuse me?”

Your retort is laced with more indignant anger than intended, but at this point in the night, you cannot for the life of you bring yourself to care about your tone. It’s been a long day, and you weren’t about to let your stupid boss make fun of your appearance, of all things.

Bakugou probably senses the significant change in your demeanor, because his eyes widen in surprise ever so slightly before he sits up and opens his mouth to explain himself.

“You’ve been looking like you accidentally drank spoiled milk for the past hour and the shit aftertaste isn’t going away.” He haughtily shakes his head, and it takes everything in you not to jump him and choke your boss.

To your disdain, however, he continues.

“It’s either you spit it out or I’m going to have to force you to tell me what’s wrong.”

You gape at him. Whatever you expected him to say, it wasn’t that.

As quickly as you can, however, you attempt to regain your bearings and at least try to seem nonchalant, clearing your throat as unbothered as possible to top it all off. “Well, working overtime to iron out office squabbles isn’t exactly my idea of a relaxing Friday night, thank you very much.”

He scoffs. “Bullshit.”

You almost get whiplash from how quickly you look at him. His brazen rudeness—which, right now, is worse than usual which is saying something, mind you—renders you incapable of saying anything aside from another winded: “Excuse me?”

He rolls his eyes. “Miss me with that bullshit, dumbass.”

You feel yourself heat up in irritation. “I thought I told you to stop calling me dumbass.”

“You’d rather I call you princess?”

At that, you break eye contact despite yourself, choosing to stare at his forehead instead. It’s still unnerving—looking at any part of his body, really—but it’s better than looking at him squarely and witnessing the smirk you know has taken over his unfairly handsome features.

Your voice is small, to your chagrin, when you reply. “That’s actually a lot worse.”

The man dares to bark out a laugh.

You continue to metaphorically choke him in your head.

“Okay then, dumbass,” he emphasizes the nickname and you are about 99% sure a pained expression is dancing across your face because Bakugou is observing you with even more amusement before his features settle into a look of seriousness.

“As I was saying before you missed the point entirely—I highly doubt you’re this bothered because of fucking overtime,” he eyes you cautiously before pressing on. “Something’s wrong.”

You don’t know if it’s the exhaustion of the week filled with workplace conflict, or the crushing news you received this morning in the mail, or the very fact that Bakugou, despite his roughness and the annoyingly persistent way he’s been poking at your mood like it’s an itchy scab, is looking at you with genuine concern—but you end up doing it.

You give in.

You feel the tears welling up in your eyes before you even get the chance to deny them permission to, and at the sight of them Bakugou sits up even straighter in alarm—and you don’t know what comes over you because you start laughing so hard, your hand shoots up to your stomach in an attempt to keep it from cramping.

“Oi.”

The expression on his face is so unbelievably baffled that you only end up cackling to yourself more.

It takes a few more minutes before the sillies are fully flushed out of your system and really, it only took you a glance at Bakugou to realize you probably looked demented just now.

Feeling self-conscious all of a sudden, you quickly wipe away the tears in your eyes and muster enough courage to flash him a genuine smile.

To your delight, he flashes you one right back, albeit tentatively—one that is boyish and charming under the rather dim lights of his corner office.

Although he seemingly reboots to his default state because it’s immediately replaced by a frown and followed by: “You’re so weird, you know that?”

You snort and, before you can stop yourself: “Not as weird as my ex.”

At that, Bakugou’s entire countenance changes—he visibly stiffens in his seat and his eyebrows furrow in what you believe is confusion at the sudden mention of your past lover.

Bakugou says nothing, however, and so you take that as a sign to continue.

“Remember that meeting we had last March with Chef Asahi about our collaboration with his restaurant where I was late and you gave me shit for it? And when you asked I told you it was because I just got dumped over the phone?”

He gives you a curt nod, lips tight.

“Well,” you chuckle nervously, feeling embarrassed at your upcoming revelation, “I just found out that that ex is getting married in two months, and I’m invited.”

Neither of you says anything for the next—what feels like—hour.

Until Bakugou takes a sharp inhale, leans forward on his desk, and stares you down straight in the eyes: “I’ll do it.”

“What?”

He scowls at you like you’ve got a pea for a brain. “Don’t make me say it twice, dumbass.”

You frown at his hostility, your own bewilderment chipping away at your already thinning patience. “You’re not saying anything.”

Bakugou sighs, and he looks like what he is about to say next physically pains him.

“I’ll be your fucking date to the wedding.”

tagging. @kitthepurplepotato @chelbyisbord @lovra974 @katsukis1wife @brunnetteiwik

special shoutout to @he3v4n for reading the prequel to this and following thereafter--inadvertently making me check out past writing and get inspired to write this <3

[watchnrant]

Agatha All AlongEpisode 3: Easter Egg Breakdown

Amulets

Every Witch Has One (Not Just Agatha)

A key detail from this episode is the revelation that every witch in the coven has their own amulet, not just Agatha. As the witches traverse the Witches’ Road, which transforms into a sandy walkway leading to a beach house, their attire shifts to match the setting, yet their amulets remain. This small but significant touch teases the potential deeper importance of amulets for MCU witches and possibly hints at their connection to power and identity within witchcraft.

Big Little Lies Reference

An Homage to HBO's Big Little Lies

Mrs. Hart’s (Debra Jo Rupp) remark about the beach house feeling like it’s straight out of "Huge Tiny Lies" is a clever nod to Big Little Lies. This HBO show, which revolves around secrets and a murder investigation in a wealthy seaside town, is reflected in the trial-like proceedings in this episode. From the luxurious coastal setting to the suspense-filled plot, this homage adds another layer to Agatha All Along, showcasing Marvel’s playful engagement with pop culture.

Mephisto Confirmed?

Agent of Mephisto

The episode drops a significant hint about Mephisto’s potential existence in the MCU. When Jennifer Hale speaks to Teen, she warns him about Agatha, citing dark rumors about her trading her son, Nicholas Scratch, for the Darkhold. According to these whispers, Nicholas became an agent of Mephisto, confirming that the demon lord may already be operating behind the scenes. This moment sets the stage for larger MCU implications, tying in with long-standing fan theories about Mephisto's involvement in mystical storylines.

Trading Her Son for the Darkhold

"She Wouldn’t Recognize Her Own Son"

In a chilling revelation, Jennifer suggests that Agatha wouldn't recognize her son if he appeared before her. This is a subtle clue that Teen might actually be Nicholas Scratch, Agatha’s long-lost son, rather than the presumed reincarnation of Wanda’s son Billy (aka Wiccan). The mystery surrounding Teen’s identity deepens, making this a key narrative thread for future episodes.

Alice Wu’s Tattoo

Cursed Women & Protection

Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn) reveals the story behind her tattoo, which was given to her at age 13 to ward off a family curse.

Teen also shares that something significant happened to him when he was 13. Given that Teen is now 16 and WandaVision occurred three years ago, this suggests a connection to Wanda Maximoff, further fueling the theory that Teen may be Billy Kaplan.

This conversation is filled with subtle clues that connect characters through shared trauma and mysterious pasts.

Mrs. Hart’s Hallucination

"Please…Wanda, Let Him Breathe!"

Mrs. Hart's hallucination brings back a haunting moment from WandaVision. Near the end of the episode, she is shown begging Wanda to "let him breathe," seemingly reliving the traumatic death of her husband, which may have been caused by the limitations of Wanda's Hex. In WandaVision, many residents were trapped in loops or frozen, and this new revelation implies that Mrs. Hart’s husband was among the unintended victims of Wanda’s control. It’s a tragic callback to the consequences of Wanda’s grief and power.

Lilia’s Premonition

"Try to Save Agatha"

Lilia’s sudden outburst, "Try to save Agatha," feels like an eerie premonition. This brief but impactful moment hints that Agatha may soon face grave danger, and saving her could become a central objective for the other witches. It’s a well-placed piece of foreshadowing that could hint at Agatha’s future role in the MCU.

Coven's Hallucinations

Facing Past Traumas

Each witch in Agatha’s coven faces a nightmarish hallucination tied to their deepest traumas.

Alice relives her mother's grief over her grandmother’s death, feeling a terrifying sense of inherited doom.

Jennifer’s hallucination shows her facing a man—possibly a doctor or priest—who calls her an "inconvenient woman" and tries to drown her.

Lilia’s vision is especially haunting, as she encounters a demon-looking nun after following a mysterious teenage girl.

These hallucinations provide insight into the coven members' pasts and suggest that their traumas are far from resolved.

Agatha’s Hallucination

Did She Trade Her Son for the Darkhold?

Agatha's hallucination is particularly disturbing. She approaches a baby’s bassinet, only to find the Darkhold in place of the infant. This vision supports Jennifer's earlier claim that Agatha traded her son for the Book of the Damned, but Agatha’s horrified reaction suggests that there is much more to this story. The moment reveals Agatha’s internal conflict and deep-seated regrets, adding depth to her character’s motivations.

Hansel and Gretel Reference

Lilia’s Friend and the Oven

Lilia's brief mention of her friend who went into an oven is a dark reference to the classic Hansel and Gretel tale. In the context of witches and burning, this could symbolize the fate of witches who face persecution or punishment, tying into the show's overall themes of betrayal and survival.

[felondese]

here are my guesses for how they're doing this:

morrigan has been taken over by mythal to the point where her personal development and history pre-mythal don't matter all that much, so no references to her potential child or partner. we're going to see mythal in morrigan shape which I'm okay with for elgar'nan-whooping-purposes

we're just going to pretend that well of sorrows thing didn't happen shhh. i think they'd rather just sweep that one under the rug considering there wasn't even real solas reaction dialogue with him in your party (he mildly disagrees with you drinking but he also doesn't want morrigan to), just his seemingly random ass outrage back at skyhold after the fact. they really fumbled this one already, i think, so probably for the best to just ignore it, even if that's a shame because it's so chewy. plus the well is essentially morrigan's now anyway whether she drank or not

the inquisition is a handful of people at this point regardless of disbandment or not, and we won't really hear from anyone we know that's still working with them. they can't really reference any of the advisors or companions other than varric and harding. as little as our previous choices matter, i have a hard time imagining a significant difference in game states based on, for example, having forces and resources to contribute

the inquisitor is going to make an appearance but get kidnapped/hurt/go MIA for most of the game early on so their presence in the story is the only thing that's significant, not any personal details, anything that might showcase personality or reference their choices in inquisition. probably gonna die to tie up loose ends

solas will be a lil extra sad if lavellan romanced him but I'm not expecting much in terms of solavellan nods. i am betting the difference will be minimal, like friendly vs romanced in trespasser. best case scenario a kiss and he'll throw in a vhenan at the end maybe when he breaks her heart again. definitely not banking on murals or anything significant.

that said, i am thinking the only one of the three choices that will actually have much of an impact is if you romanced solas. i highly doubt any of the other dai romances will get mentioned since past char choices related to them aren't and there are too many variables

whether your inky wanted to redeem or stop solas won't really matter. we need his help either way and with the gods released the veil is probably coming down whether he does it or not

the rest of the world is on fucking fire early enough in the game that it doesn't matter who's on what thrones. it's all irrelevant when the evanuris bust out. no chantry, no kingdoms left standing, just chaos and death

the chars i was really looking forward to seeing again and kind of expected based on location/factions (dorian, isabela, zevran, sten, fenris) might get a passing reference in text but i hear it's a real pain in the ass to get the voice actors and art departments involved for cameos, plus all the possible contingencies, so I'm dropping those hopes. should count my blessings that they aren't horrifically killed on screen because that would be the only other option i guess

basically i'm going to bring my expectations back down to earth and then a little lower for safety. can't be disappointed if i don't expect much going in.

still looking forward to the game? absolutely.

[anghraine]

Aww, Ash admitted to me when we were discussing Star Wars opinions that she's not only thought about these things before, she's actually really feeling like using her advanced creative writing degree to write ...................... fanfiction, and has actually done so in the past.

me, shoving my 67 SW fanfics on AO3 under the bed: Oh hey, awesome! That sounds really interesting.

[shokupanda]

me when time moves forward at a steady pace: how the fuck is it more than halfway through july already. this fuckers rapidly sprinting when im not looking huh

[sidesteppostinghours]

do you think julia wouldve grown her hair back out as easily as ricardo shaved his mustache if step asked her to.

[lovelesslittleloser]

People should be more afraid of asexuals, because they’re the only people that are immune to one of the seven deadly sins

[magentagalaxies]

went on a trans seinfeld tangent in class today and none of the cis people thought it was interesting >:(

[impossible-rat-babies]

.

[cynicalmusings]

do you ever think about how we’ll all be in the past one day?

[babacontainsmultitudes]

“august has arrived and again I swallow my bones in the burning sun” actually it's been a bit cold if I'm being honest.

[hua-fei-hua]

at church reading the hymn lyrics like "hey i learned that word from genshin!" and "hey i learned that word from genshin!" and "hey i learned that word from translating song lyrics so that i could write genshin fic!" and "hey i learned that word from genshin!" and finally "omg i learned that word from the king's avatar"

[nateserenas]

literally to present the world with a better version of you which could mean facing your future and and forgetting past mistakes or finally settling on a brand new path while they both stare at ticket stubs from a film they saw together (literally they both kept the tickets...) and then they promptly throw away the ticket stubs as though they've just been burnt because they catch themselves doing something terrible - thinking about each other. (literally they both kept the tickets but then absolutely did not think about why they'd kept the tickets, because as if they've reached a point where they'll allow themselves to realise that maybe it's possible for them to enjoy each other's company yet. and then them throwing away the tickets is them being like nope refusing to think about why I kept this it never happened i definitely did not willingly engage in recreational activity with dan humphrey/blair waldorf and then i definitely definitely definitely did not keep the evidence it just didn't happen none of it happened i will not think about it ticket gone means no more thoughts on the matter okay case closed moving on time to go visit serena...)

[pandoratheprocrasticreator]

if toh s3 had a full 20 episodes i wonder what the acrostic would have been. definitely something about luz. s1 focused on eda’s baggage and backstory, so the acrostic was about her. as was the code in the background of each episode, being about the parallel between the clawthorne sisters and the wittebane brothers. s2 focused on the same with king, so the acrostic and code were about him and the history of the titans and collectors. and now s3 is obviously heavily focused on luz’s baggage and what her homelife was like with camila. im sure they would have gone into it even more if they had more episodes. i wonder if they would have explored more of the human world and that would have been what the code was about. or maybe it would have been about luz’s found family.

[nabaath-areng]

I was planning to build new desktop this fall, but seeing that the winter half year practically chains me to bed making me incapable of sitting up I took some of my savings to get a laptop so I can have it in bed for drawing, writing etc at least. And so I'll save back up the coming months and build it once spring arrives instead (hopefully component prices has gone down then too)

All that to say I can only eat my hands as I catch glimpses of dawntrail news after having been ffxiv-less since july last year. my abstinence is out the roof