Alex Z
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azincle.bsky.social
Alex Z
@azincle.bsky.social
330 followers 330 following 870 posts
Deep State supporter

Deadly Fixed Object enjoyer. Cleveland Guardians fan. Liberal YIMBY. Repeal the 2nd amendment. He/him. @azincle everywhere
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azincle.bsky.social
Healthcare costs alone are more than fare revenue!
November 18, 2025 at 1:56 PM
azincle.bsky.social
New theory - everything is healthcare costs
Kay Sutula, Director of the Office Management and Budget, stated that healthcare and prescription costs had increased by 34% from October 2024 to October 2025. Should this trend continue through November and December, staff projects an annual expenditure of $45.6 million by the end of the year.
November 18, 2025 at 1:53 PM
azincle.bsky.social
Now it's European summer vacation
May 24, 2025 at 3:48 PM
azincle.bsky.social
Coming over the river into Porto
May 24, 2025 at 3:15 PM
azincle.bsky.social
ClF3 is the worst I've heard of. It is apparently also used for making semiconductors
www.science.org/content/blog...
May 24, 2025 at 1:37 PM
azincle.bsky.social
On the high speed train from Lisbon to Porto
May 24, 2025 at 12:54 PM
azincle.bsky.social
Streetcar tracks visible through the construction on Payne Ave
May 18, 2025 at 12:54 PM
azincle.bsky.social
The sun came out so I dropped everything I was doing (posting) to go see the cherry blossoms
Close up of cherry blossom flowers with Wade Lagoon and Severance Hall out of focus in the background
April 12, 2025 at 8:28 PM
azincle.bsky.social
I love actually working in manufacturing and having to tell people "No this is not nearly as cool as you think"
April 6, 2025 at 1:29 AM
azincle.bsky.social
Also a contender from Futurism
Trump Tariffs Show Signs of Being Written by AI "Exactly what the dumbest kid in the class would do."
April 3, 2025 at 6:52 PM
azincle.bsky.social
Forbes may have the Daily Mail beat now
Trump’s Tariff Formula Slammed As ‘Fake’ And ‘Incredibly Stupid’ By Experts
April 3, 2025 at 6:43 PM
azincle.bsky.social
12 hours later, CNN finally cracked the code but has it buried in a live update thread released at 5 AM eastern
How were the tariffs decided? The tariffs were pitched as “reciprocal,” but appear to have been calculated using a simple calculation: the country’s trade deficit divided by its exports to the US multiplied by half. That means countries that export more to the US than they import are taxed higher.
April 3, 2025 at 12:29 PM
azincle.bsky.social
Daily Mail now out with the strongest words, calling the numbers straight up fake.
Economists rip apart Trump's 'insane' list of 'fake' international tariff charges levied against US and reveal 'the formula White House used' to create reciprocal fees that have caused global chaos
April 3, 2025 at 12:21 PM
azincle.bsky.social
And also scooping 99% of the political press: Mediaite
What the Trump administration seems to have done is taken the deficit ($235.6 billion) and divided it by the total number of imports from the E.U. ($605.8 billion), yielding a figure of 38.89%, which the administration rounded up to 39% and called a “Tariff to the U.S.A.” imposed by the E.U. But obviously, that is not a tariff.
April 3, 2025 at 1:26 AM
azincle.bsky.social
Finally just decided to do a keyword search for news that actually figured out the method. And finally, Rolling Stone has someone who follows James Surowiecki on Twitter. We have a winner!
But the “tariff” percentage numbers that Trump presented (on a large chart that he hugged in the windy April weather) do not bear any direct relation to actual tariffs these countries levy. Instead, economics scribes trying to puzzle out the White House’s numbers theorize that they represent each country’s trade deficit with the United States, divided by the value of that country’s exports to the U.S. — a metric that the Atlantic contributor James Surowiecki called “extraordinary nonsense.”
April 3, 2025 at 1:25 AM
azincle.bsky.social
Xinhua is getting close, but still hasn't cracked it.
Trump claimed that other trading partners impose "non-monetary barriers" on the United States. The chart illustrates the tariff rates "charged" by different countries or regions to the United States, including "currency manipulation" and "trade barriers." "There is no basis for the claimed tariff-equivalent rates imposed by other countries. This is pure invention," Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told Xinhua.
April 3, 2025 at 1:22 AM
azincle.bsky.social
Maybe some foreign media? Let's check Al-Jazeera. They've figured out the numbers are fake, but not how fake!
How ‘kind’ are Trump’s new tariffs? Megha Bahree Megha Bahree Reporting from Vancouver, Canada In his Rose Garden ceremony, Trump has tried to frame his newly unveiled tariffs as “very kind” – but some experts are questioning that assertion. “The notion that these tariffs are ‘discounted’ and ‘reciprocal’ compared with those charged by US trading partners is simply false,” said Brett House, an economics professor at Columbia Business School. “Any notion of discounting and reciprocity is premised on opaque White House calculations of the effects of alleged currency manipulation and supposed trade barriers that are unlikely to stand up to inspection by outsiders.”
April 3, 2025 at 1:21 AM
azincle.bsky.social
Politico is so close, but still can't figure it out!
The Trump administration said the rate set for each country reflects a combination of the tariff and “non-tariff” or regulatory barriers that U.S. exporters face in those markets, which they then cut in half to arrive at the final figure. Around 85 countries received a duty rate of more than 10 percent, but that figure includes the 27 nations in the EU. In many cases, the foreign non-tariff barriers — which include regulations like food, safety and environmental standards — are worse than the tariffs that countries impose, White House officials said in a briefing with reporters before the announcement. They were granted anonymity as part of the ground rules for the briefing. The United States runs a trade deficit with most, if not all, of the countries it hit with an individualized tariff rate. In contrast, it runs a trade surplus with the United Kingdom, which the Trump administration just hit with the base line rate of 10 percent.
April 3, 2025 at 1:14 AM
azincle.bsky.social
Fox News obviously hasn't, but they did point out the interesting fact that it doesn't include tariffs on Russia or Belarus and that the administration's explanation for why is wrong.
Notably absent on the list of countries subject to tariffs were Mexico, Canada, Russia and Belarus. Bessent said the United States doesn’t trade with Russia or Belarus because they are sanctioned. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, however, found in 2024 that the United States’ total goods trade with Russia was an estimated $3.5 billion.
April 3, 2025 at 1:11 AM
azincle.bsky.social
Wired hasn't figured out the formula yet, but they're most skeptical so far!
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced the US was imposing reciprocal tariffs on a small collection of Antarctic islands that are not inhabited by humans, as part of a global trade war aimed at asserting US dominance. The Heard and McDonald Islands, known for their populations of penguins and seabirds, can only be reached by sea.
April 3, 2025 at 1:05 AM
azincle.bsky.social
CNBC has “reciprocal tariff” in quotes implying they're skeptical, but hasn't cracked the code yet.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday laid out the U.S. “reciprocal tariff” rates that more than 180 countries and territories, including European Union members, will face under his sweeping new trade policy. Trump and the White House shared a series of charts on social media detailing the tariff rates they say other countries impose on the U.S. Those purported rates include the countries’ “Currency Manipulation and Trade Barriers.” An adjacent column shows the new U.S. tariff rates on each country, as well as the European Union. Those rates are, in most cases, roughly half of what the Trump administration claims each country has “charged” the U.S.
April 3, 2025 at 12:59 AM
azincle.bsky.social
CNN so far is just parroting Trump's words
“We will charge them approximately half of what they are and have been charging us, so the tariffs will be not a full reciprocal,” Trump said from the Rose Garden on Wednesday afternoon. “I could have done that, I guess, but it would have been tough for a lot of countries and we didn’t want to do that.” For example, instead of matching the European Union’s 39% tariff on US goods, the new duty on the EU will be 20% instead. China, which was already slapped with a 20% tariff for its role in fentanyl trade, will be levied an additional 34% — half of the 67% tariff it imposes on the US — bringing its new rate to 54%.
April 3, 2025 at 12:56 AM
azincle.bsky.social
Of course Fox only had the number the market closed at. Bloomberg was showing live futures markets
April 2, 2025 at 9:45 PM
azincle.bsky.social
Their new talking point is "They were merely attack plans not war plans"
March 26, 2025 at 5:25 PM
azincle.bsky.social
Very cool that we're getting to see this play out in real life.
In literary criticism, an idiot plot is one which is "kept in motion solely by virtue of the fact that everybody involved is an idiot",[1]: 26  and where the story would quickly end, or possibly not even happen, if this were not the case.[2] It is a narrative where its conflict comes from characters not recognizing, or not being told, key information that would resolve the conflict, often because of plot contrivance. The only thing that prevents the conflict's resolution is the character's constant avoidance or obliviousness of it throughout the plot, even if it was already obvious to the viewer, so the characters are all "idiots" in that they are too obtuse to simply resolve the conflict immediately.
March 26, 2025 at 2:53 PM