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Thursday GNR: A Positive-Sum Interaction [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-05-08

A real economy is by necessity a positive sum system. This is the heart of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, which you will note was not called Wealth of Billionaires. That would have been a good description of the Mercantilist system that provoked the American Revolution. You may recognize it today.

Mercantilism promotes government regulation of a nation's economy for the purpose of augmenting and bolstering state power at the expense of rival national powers. High tariffs, especially on manufactured goods, were almost universally a feature of mercantilist policy.

The Koan of the Invisible Hand

The Art of the Screw

If I bake more bread than I need, and you churn more butter than you need, we both profit by exchanging bread for butter. If I get paid a fair wage, exchanging labor for money, and exchange some of that money for rent, food, clothing, shelter, health care…then my employer, myself, and all of those I buy from make a profit. But MAGAtroids in general and The Himself in particular are incapable of grokking this. A deal, to him, is only real if he gets to rip somebody off. Profit is irrelevant to those whose only concern is privilege, of making sure that Those People don’t get anything like their fair share.

And there you also have the entire Republican Congressional agenda, their under water polling, their stark underperformance in multitudes of court cases and elections…The Bad News Boors have a fundamental problem with tax cuts, slashing Medicaid, and tariffs, the heart of their legislative agenda, which are very specifically the plans that the public hates worst.

So, Chris Hayes asked last night, how do they sell these plans?

Do they try to pretend that none of it is happening? Yes, but they can’t.

Do they try to pretend that it is all good for their low-income, largely rural voters? Yes, but they can’t.

Do they try to sneak it all through in the dead of night? Yes, but they can’t.

Do they fuss about how many bills to put everything into? Yes. And that is something they can do, but it doesn’t do them any good. It just ends up with the Thing That Ate the GQP demanding that they put it all into One Big Beautiful Bill, and actually call it that.

Do they try to…? Yes, whatever it is, but they can’t.

In particular, there are what you might call “moderate Rs who want to cut Medicaid by somewhat less than $880 billion, and those that you might call wackadoodlidoodles who want to cut far more.

We, of course, want a government informed by empathy and by real economics, both of which are anathema to them. That means that we have to work much harder than them in the midterms and the next Presidential cycle.

And also point and laugh to the max.

Regular Good News

Rabidly Repellent Republicans Rushing to Ruin/Bad News for Them

Far too much to list here.

I’ll just mention that House Republicans have blocked the Trump plan to defund Planned Parenthood completely.

Science! Lifeforms! Weirdness (Legitimate or Stupid)!

We’re doing all of this because Donald Trump does not understand that trade is a positive-sum interaction.

Derek Thompson, The Atlantic

But the haters can’t avoid having positive interactions with all the rest of us. Don’t try to explain it to them. Just enjoy.

x JWST’s most ambitious view is now available to everyone The largest, deepest JWST mosaic of the Universe ever taken, the COSMOS-Web field, is now complete and available to all. Get the full 166 Megapixel view, and see what's inside for yourself. bigthink.com/starts-with-...

#space #astro #science



[image or embed] — Ethan Siegel (@startswithabang.bsky.social) May 5, 2025 at 11:04 AM

x Astronomers using JWST have identified 1,678 galaxy groups—some dating back 12 billion years. This is the largest such sample ever collected and helps reveal how galaxies evolved in the early universe.

#JWST

#Astronomy

#Galaxies

#Cosmos

🧪🔭 Paper:

www.aanda.org/component/ar...



[image or embed] — Kenneth Becker (@geophotographer.org) May 4, 2025 at 3:28 PM

x What at first appeared to be an unremarkable low-mass galaxy cluster has been revealed to host a rare pair of parenthesis-shaped radio sources. aasnova.org/2025/05/05/f... 🔭🧪



[image or embed] — AAS Nova (@aasnova.org) May 5, 2025 at 11:10 AM

x I found this Painted Bunting in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. It was more interested in a nearby pool of water than posing for a photographer, but I got a few shots anyway.

#bird #birdphotography #naturephotography #paintedbunting



[image or embed] — Jonathan Ley (@jonathanley.bsky.social) May 8, 2025 at 12:05 AM

UNM Researchers Plan Clinical Trials to Test Vaccine Against Alzheimer’s-Promoting Tau Protein

x Strapped some lasers and lights on our dropcam and drifted along the Santa Monica Bay ocean floor at about 40m depth. Absolutely hacky, but it worked. Plenty of brittlestars, sanddabs, urchins, tubeworms, anemones, and more! Turns out octopuses are a lot like cats when it comes to lasers.

🦑🐟🧪🌎



[image or embed] — Vantuna Research Group at Occidental College (@vrgoxy.bsky.social) May 5, 2025 at 11:33 AM

Ancient Poems Reveal the History of the Endangered Yangtze Porpoise

Mentions of the critically endangered Yangtze finless porpoise in ancient Chinese poetry have revealed missing information about the habitat of the world’s only freshwater porpoise x Walked around the newly formed pond today and saw the beaver lodge; pretty wild to think this used to be just a narrow little creek, barely a foot wide. Nature doesn’t mess around when it comes to transformation. #BeaverLodge #NatureAtWork #PondLife #BackyardWildlife #CreekToPond #BeaverDam



[image or embed] — Misery (@chaoticcalm.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 1:13 PM

Funny or Fuggedaboudit

YouTube ameriCArtoon, FreedomToons, The Week, Political Cartoons, DK Cartoons, DK Image Library, The Onion

P. D. Q. Bach and More

P.D.Q. Bach Fan Channel on YouTube

List of compositions by P. D. Q. Bach

P.D.Q. Bach - Twelve Quite Heavenly Songs

Muppet Songs: Harry Belafonte vs. Animal - Drum Battle

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