I’m a little surprised that Ringworld hasn’t come up, yet. Maybe I’m assuming that those of you who are science fiction fans are all Niven fans already. Anyway, it’s the best damn pastiche of the Wizard of Oz you’ll ever read. No, seriously, Larry Niven himself has had this insight (WARNING: TV TROPES LINK).
And so, adieu to The High Crusade.
Neither being the big ones, but Game Plus and The Descent might prove of interest. To be honest, I’m not in a rush to get either. Issue 12 of The Secret World is about to drop and I’m getting along in Elder Scrolls Online*: and when those are done I’ve got a bit of a backlog. I can always revisit The Witcher: Wild Hunt and Dragon Age Inquisition later. There’s really not much of a rush, honestly.
Moe Lane
*It’s fun, once you actually get to play it (after downloading the double-digit gigabytes’ worth of patches).
Michael Barone asks the question:
How to explain the rejection by American Democrats and British Labourites of center-left strategies that recently proved so successful?
…and while his answers are not bad I am struck by something that is not often addressed: to wit, one major reason why the center-left in the USA is so weak today is because it made the mistake of trusting the progressive wing of the Democratic party. In 2009 the progressives teamed up with the cynics running the Democratic Establishment and rammed through any number of proposals that would have made 1980s Democrats vomit in sheer disgust and embarrassment. Then the American voting public responded by purging the center-left from Congress and as many states as the voting public could manage.
And not having politicians around that can believably tell you that you’re screwing up? That’s going to be a factor in any kind of plausible rejection scenario. That’s just the way that it is.
Via Hot Air Headlines.
Moe Lane
(Via Hot Air) I was struck by something when I read this: “Neither Obama nor Clinton has spoken critically of a $15-an-hour federal minimum. But recent comments from the candidate, and from officials in Obama’s administration, suggest Clinton and Obama may be worried that such a large increase could prove too much for some parts of the country to bear.” To wit, that this may be one situation where the Democratic establishment may not actually understand the motivations of its own liberal base. For that matter, possibly the liberal base doesn’t really actively understand said motivations either. Continue reading A federal minimum wage should be anathema to anybody who likes local city life.
One of my readers (JAB) found this: the SCP Foundation. Said reader described the site as “Delta Green and Warehouse 13 had a love child:” I personally would have said GURPS Warehouse 23
Continue reading Check out this “The SCP Foundation” site my readers found!
Raise your hand, everybody who’s surprised: “Three years after California voters passed a ballot measure to raise taxes on corporations and generate clean-energy jobs by funding energy-efficiency projects in schools, barely one-tenth of the promised jobs have been created, and the state has no comprehensive list to show how much work has been done or how much energy has been saved.”
[lowering hand]
…What? I was surprised. I would have personally bet that California wouldn’t manage to get past one-twentieth. To get a whole one-tenth must have involved people with whips. Or possibly cattle prods.
Continue reading Shocker: Californian green job tax ‘didn’t work.’ Unless ‘impact crater’ counts.
ONE WEEK.
…but this is the most joyless political silly season I’ve suffered through since I started this gig. I’m pretty much done with it, and it’s still a couple of weeks before Labor Day and the resumption of real news. I’m almost ready to welcome a sex scandal, or something.
Just felt the need to get that off my chest.
OK, strictly speaking it also could be fairly called a ‘husband tax’ or a ‘spouse tax.’ You may also quibble on the ‘tax’ bit, largely because this is being done to avoid a tax. But, hey: no Republican voted for this monstrosity, remember? So I’m admittedly a little indifferent to any Democratic pain over the nomenclature.
To avoid the Affordable Care Act’s so-called “Cadillac tax” on rich benefit plans, companies are adding surcharges of $100 a month or more to wives and husbands of workers, hoping spouses will seek coverage elsewhere,new employer data shows.
[snip]
The idea behind the so-called “spousal surcharge” employers are implementing is to reduce the number of people an employer covers so the company can save money and avoid triggering the special excise tax for plans with high cost benefits.
Continue reading Obamacare’s implicit $1,200/year ‘wife tax.’
Automation is coming. And it’s being driven by artificial economic pressures. But you knew that already.
The industry could be ready for another jolt as a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour nears in the District and campaigns to boost wages gain traction around the country. About 30 percent of the restaurant industry’s costs come from salaries, so burger-flipping robots — or at least super-fast ovens that expedite the process — become that much more cost competitive if the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is doubled.
“The problem with the minimum-wage offensive is that it throws the accounting of the restaurant industry totally upside down,” said Harold Miller, vice president of franchise development for Persona Pizzeria, who also consults for other chains. “My position is pay your people properly, keep them longer, treat them right, and robots are going to be helpful in doing that, because it will help the restaurateur survive.”
Continue reading Yet another article on minimum wage hikes fueling automation.
