What We’re Reading
When you’re trying to get wealthy, you think it’s this ridiculously important thing. And then when you make some level of money and you’re “financially independent,” you realize that it does make your life easier. In some ways you have a little bit more access to things and certainly more luxury, but it doesn’t make your life easier as it relates to the great equalizer, which I would call the human condition. So, what is that?
Bill Gates’ mom died. He was a young man. He said that he had all the money in the world, but he couldn’t figure out a way to save her. And so, there’s a great equalizer. We’re born. We die.
The Chinese lockdown was more intense than almost anywhere else in the world. Neighborhood committees, the most grassroots level of Communist Party organization, enforced the rules, and in many places they limited households to sending one individual outside every two or three days to buy necessities. If a family were suspected of exposure to the virus, it wasn’t unheard-of for their door to be sealed shut while tests and contact-tracing were being conducted. One student I had taught in the nineties sent a photograph of a door in her community that had been closed with two official stamps. “I haven’t seen such things since I was born, but people who are older must have some memory of such scenes,” she wrote, referring to the Maoist campaigns. “We are becoming numb, which may have more bad impact than the virus, in the long run.”
The number of people applying for Employer Identification Numbers, which new businesses file with the IRS, has doubled in recent weeks over year-ago levels and has outpaced the rate seen during the Great Recession. Most are so-called nonemployers such as sole proprietors, although economists have spotted a surprisingly strong increase in applications for businesses likely to hire staff.
Elon Musk’s Neuralink currently develops a new feature on their brain chip that will enable humans to go forth and choose the mood by balancing off a person’s hormone levels.
SUVs:
People aren’t getting their tests back quickly enough.
Well, that’s just stupidity. The majority of all US tests are completely garbage, wasted. If you don’t care how late the date is and you reimburse at the same level, of course they’re going to take every customer. Because they are making ridiculous money, and it’s mostly rich people that are getting access to that. You have to have the reimbursement system pay a little bit extra for 24 hours, pay the normal fee for 48 hours, and pay nothing [if it isn’t done by then]. And they will fix it overnight.
Have a good weekend, stay safe.