Tuesday, April 14, 2026

https://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2026/04/tuesday-april-14-2026/

I've always been leery of the AI debate over creative content – audio or visual media, including written material. A recent interview between Rick Beato and Justin Hawkins provided me with a frame.

https://philosophics.blog/2026/04/10/art-or-content/?utm_source=masto&utm_medium=social

It reminds me of the old argument between high and low art, another bollocksed argument in my opinion. Homey don't play dat.

#philosophy #music #art #ai #language #perception #popculture #popmusic #protectionism #psychology #society #taste #technology #video #virtue #writing

Protectionism in the US heading in an interesting direction as The US bans foreign made internet routers

Which is particularly interesting because there aren't any US made internet routers really, certainly nothing like the number required for keeping all Americans online.

Routers are mostly insecure due to company negligence with updates and bugs which has nothing to do with nationality of course. American companies are just as likely to fail to spot a buffer overflow or abandon customers when they discontinue a product.

American companies aren't even less likely to want to spy on you and steal all your data and then be forced to give it up to government if they ask.

Hard to see how this goes well for anyone. Except many the people certifying products that evade the ban.

#routers #law #protectionism

Lobbying efforts are going insane with fear that #3DPrinting will replace big box hardware chains like #HomeDepot and #Lowe's. They're trying anything to stop the technology, including direct #Protectionism and bizarre arguments about national security. 

#TechnologyNews #GovernmentOverreach #PublicPolicy #Disruption

https://reason.com/2026/02/25/politicians-consider-soviet-style-controls-on-3d-printers

"A large literature anticipated substantial long‑run costs of leaving the EU Single Market and Customs Union (HM Treasury 2016, IMF 2016, Van Reenen et al 2016). Early ex‑post work using macro data also pointed to a sizeable hit to UK GDP and trade (Born et al. 2019, Dhingra and Sampson 2022, Springford 2022, Haskel and Martin 2023, Freeman et al. 2025). VoxEU has been an important forum for this research and debate. Our contribution is to revisit the question now that almost a decade has passed since the referendum, bringing together macro and micro evidence in a single framework and comparing actual outcomes to the profession’s pre‑referendum forecasts.

In a new paper (Bloom et al. 2025), we combine micro data collected through the Decision Maker Panel (DMP), a survey of UK firms, with publicly available macro data to estimate the impact of Brexit. Our three main findings are:

- Brexit has had a large and persistent effect on the UK economy. By 2025, we estimate that UK GDP per capita was 6–8% lower than it would have been without Brexit. Investment was 12–18% lower, employment 3–4% lower, and productivity 3–4% lower.

- These losses emerged gradually. The impact was hard to see in 2017–18, but accumulated steadily over the subsequent decade as uncertainty persisted, trade barriers rose, and firms diverted resources away from productive activity.

- Economists were roughly right on the magnitude of the impact, but wrong on the timing. The consensus pre‑referendum forecast of a 4% long‑run GDP loss turned out to be close to the actual loss after five years, but too optimistic about the longer run."

https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/brexits-slow-burn-hit-uk-economy

#UK #Brexit #EU #Protectionism #Tariffs #TradeBarriers

**The Argentine Stockholm Syndrome**

Argentina suffers from a collective Stockholm Syndrome. The government and a few "industrialists" have held the market hostage for decades, forcing us to pay double for outdated tech. Yet, many people defend their captors, terrified that "jobs will be lost" if we stop subsidizing billionaire oligarchs. We are literally paying for the ropes they use to tie our hands.

#StockholmSyndrome #Argentina #EconomicCrisis #Protectionism #MentalChains

The mastermind behind this mess was General Alejandro Lanusse, a military dictator who signed Law 19.640 in 1972. The excuse was "geopolitics"—occupying the empty south to prevent a Chilean invasion. Fifty years later, the military is gone, but the law remains as a fossilized scam that forces 46 million people to subsidize a handful of "screwing-bolt" factories.

#History #Argentina #DictatorshipLegacy #Protectionism #TierraDelFuego

They say tech factories are in the freezing south because of the climate. It is a lie. Modern electronics need stable, air-conditioned clean rooms, not dry Antarctic cold that creates static electricity—a chip’s worst enemy. It is just a tax-haven excuse to force us to pay double for old technology.

#TechScam #Argentina #Economy #Protectionism #SiliconIsland