Interesting to think through this. Governments often cite 'building infrastructure' as something they can do to promote growth. But infrastructure requires continual spending on maintenance, and this can easily cost more than the additional economic activity created by that infrastructure (or, at least, the amount of tax that can feasibly be raised from that economic activity). So public investment can quite easily be a loss-making endeavour, with those losses obscured by the way government income and expenses are accounted.
This obviously isn't an argument against government investment in general, just an argument for more thorough (and honest!) cost-benefit analysis
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You wouldn't like portrait me...
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I should get "total nihilist who just can't stop smiling" on a t-shirt
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Not sure how much of this is clever editing to enhance anthropomorphism, but look how sad and contemplative they all look
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"The response to violence is never violence, it's always to de-escalate it. Only six shots were fired by Japanese police nationwide [in 2015]. What most Japanese police will do is get huge futons and essentially roll up a person who is being violent or drunk into a little burrito and carry them back to the station to calm them down." BBC
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"Of course, as a child I did not realize that the life I was living was considered in any way provisional or experimental by others: I thought it was just life. And when I wrote a novel about the London I grew up in, I further did not realize that by describing an environment in which people from different places lived relatively peaceably side by side, I was “championing” a situation that was in fact on trial and whose conditions could suddenly be revoked. " NY Review of Books
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Just another example of a Home Office that has adopted the organisational goal of "reduce immigration by any means available" as opposed to "assess migrants' applications fairly under the law"
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Gosh, extremely frightening/impressive to see the Thames Barrier in operation. A lot of London would be underwater if it didn't exist!
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This all sounds great in principle, though I wonder how easy it would be in practice to harvest all this water and bring it up to potable quality...
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Worrying, to say the least...
"According to the joint standing committee on intelligence, between 2006 and 2010, the SSA handled “about three million interceptions”. During this time, only 826 interception orders were granted by the required RICA judge."
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I did enjoy this movie, but I also think this criticism is valid
"Many white viewers of La La Land may well consider nostalgic escapism as a horizontal unifier—something with which everyone identifies—but longing for the past is itself a political act... One suspects Chazelle and his defenders will say analysis of this sort over-interprets, goes too far, but this is a luxury, too, a privilege. “It’s only a movie” is the apologia of people who have never been victimized by culture."
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First it was copying keys from photos, now it's fingerprints...
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Wow, a continent-sized wave!
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You know there's that thing in game theory where you pretend to be completely irrational, to force your opponents to make a deal before you destroy everything for everyone? Maybe Theresa May is doing that.... OR - even better - maybe she's actually three kids propped up on each other's shoulders, and at some point they'll admit they have no idea what they're doing, the farce will end, and we'll all have a good laugh.
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