Three Tentative Dubs

While The Iron is Hot

The United Auto Workers have struck multiple tentative deals with the big three auto makers (Ford, GM, Stellantis/Chrysler), winning most of their original requests and forcing the hand of executives to actually pay up.

While the deals are not yet solidified nor voted on by the union members, UAW president Shawn Fain posted an ecstatic video going over some of the highlights of the deals, which include significant pay raises, more job security, improved retirement, increased starting wages (some cases going up 150%!) and ongoing cost of living adjustments.

What is wild to me is that this had to happen at all. I mean it's not unexpected of course, but the adjustments here are just big versions of what should otherwise be normal adjustments as profits grow. Weird!

Pay. Your. Workers.

Well, At Least He Did The Right Thing In The End

A man was found dead, presumably from suicide, in a women's bathroom at an amusement park in Colorado. It appears that he had been planning to carry out a mass killing at the park, having broken in overnight carrying a semi-automatic rifle, semi-automatic handgun, multiple loaded magazines, and several improvised explosives.

Thankfully, he ate his own bullet before morning. Does that make him a good guy with a gun or a bad guy with a gun?

According to reports, while investigations are ongoing, he was wearing body armor and "tactical gear" with patches and emblems indicating "association with law enforcement" (which I have to assume means like, thin blue line shit and punisher logos or something).

Very Fiscally Responsible

House Republicans with their newly elected (and extraordinarily, aggressively religious) speaker unveiled a plan to provide $14.3 Billion in aid to Israel, funded by budget cuts to the IRS.

Speaker Johnson has stated that supporting Israel should be a top priority for national security. Democrats also want to fund Israel, but disagree about the cuts to the IRS, which is already struggling with their budget and recently received a larger allocation of funding from the Inflation Reduction Act.

Republicans love taking money away from the IRS because its easy points: its the big bag organization who takes all yer money, right? It's also the only organization that could be investigating the whole, y'know, billions of dollars of lost tax revenue due to ultra-wealthy people skirting tax laws. The IRS had recently gotten a bigger budget with a focus on target ing tax evasion from the wealthy. According to the CBO, $1 to the IRS brings in $5-$9 of tax revenue.

I'm not a big fan of all-powerful government agencies, but the IRS is not quite at the top of my list of agencies that need further cuts. Their operating costs are relatively negligible compared to other offices, and cuts to the IRS are much more beneficial for the ultra-wealthy regardless.

And to be clear: this proposal wouldn't save taxpayer money regardless. It's handing another win to people with enough money to avoid paying taxes while also sending billions of dollars to a colonizer state actively engaged in ethnic cleansing.

Which like, by the way, it just recently came out that Israel's government has a draft proposal for ejecting Gaza citizens into Egypt.. Like, they straight up said "oh, yeah, we have that document, but don't think about it too much okay?"

Anyway, you should know that public sentiment around US support of Israel is changing. A recent CBS News poll found that the majority of Americans are against military aid being sent to Israel, but are for humanitarian aid to Gaza (as well as humanitarian aid to Israel). Republicans skew the most against the grain there, with 57% of Republicans wanting to use taxpayer money to send military aid to Israel, while 53% of Democrats and 55% of Independents would rather not.

I Just Want You to See This Headline

The Economist wrote an article and whole-ass titled it, "What a third world war would mean for investors"

See for yourself.

This is a real quote:

This scenario would of course place financial damage a long way down the list of horrors. Even so, it is part of an investor’s job to consider exactly what it would mean for their portfolio.

On This day…

On this day in 1604, William Shakespeare's Othello was performed for the first time, performing at Whitehall Palace in London. Exactly seven years later on this day in 1611, Shakespeare's play The Tempest was performed for the first time, also at the same palace.

What I'm getting at here is this: have you written a timeless play to be performed at Whitehall Palace? Cuz it sure seems like that's a requirement for us today, and I didn't come prepared.

Here's the Weather

More Stuff

• Twitter has dropped about 56% in value since Musk purchased it, according to valuation inferred from newly announced employee shares
• YouTube is advancing their crackdown on ad blockers and will now begin blocking videos for some people if it detects you are blocking ads
• Microsoft's Xbox will now begin rejecting "unauthorized" third party controllers, seemingly to avoid cheat controllers and at the expense of accessibility
• Microsoft's AI systems generated a poll for readers of an article about a woman who died, where the poll queried users on what they thought her cause of death was
• WeWork may soon be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
• NASA is having some trouble opening the capsule from their recent mission where they fetched a sample from an asteroid. The tools they have approval to use aren't quite cutting it
• Destiny 2 developer Bungie has laid off a lot of employees and announced launch delays for their next expansion and upcoming new game