ironsoap

Joe Biden has called off a four-day trip to Germany this week that had been intended to culminate in a summit to discuss Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “victory plan” for Ukraine.

The White House said on Tuesday evening that the president would stay at home “to oversee preparations for and the response” to Hurricane Milton, which is expected to make landfall in Florida on Wednesday.

It was not clear how Biden’s absence would affect the planned summit, the first time world leaders were due to gather at the Ramstein US airbase, normally the location of a regular meeting of defence ministers to discuss military aid for Kyiv.

What are lemmy's favorite video channels for more depth then you get from average news and television sources?

Prerun is one that comes to mind as he digs, thinks, and explains, and is willing to say he's wrong. Business Insider is another one that has a great number of in depth topics, even if not quite as much as one might want sometimes. DW is another. RealLifeLore also seems to some great explaining. LegalEagle similar.

All of these are debatable to a greater or lesser degree, but I'm interested in alternative sources. What else is out there? What platform? Why?

Harris entered August with more money than Trump, and managed to raise more than she spent over the month. Trump’s campaign, by contrast, spent more than it raised despite far fewer expenses. Her campaign reported taking in $190 million; his, just shy of $45 million.

The vice president’s campaign outspent Trump $174 million to $61 million in August. But Harris’ preexisting cash advantage and superior fundraising mean that she ended the month with $235 million, $100 million more than Trump.

...

Trump is also relying heavily on outside groups, including for campaign activities that most campaigns have traditionally conducted in-house, such as canvassing.

He benefited from more outside spending on his behalf in August than Harris did — $163 million to $104 million, according to FEC independent expenditure filings.

One pro-Trump super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., reported $25 million newly raised in August, including $10 million from Wisconsin billionaire Diane Hendricks and $5 million from Paul Singer, a major GOP donor who was once critical of Trump. Several other groups that reported major spending on Trump’s behalf in August, including the Elon Musk-linked America PAC, don’t report their donors until October.

Two pro-Harris super PACs, FF PAC and American Bridge, respectively reported $36 million and $21 million raised in August. Much of that money came funneled through nonprofits, so the actual donors behind that money are not known. The largest individual donations to the groups included $3 million from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz to FF PAC and $2.5 million from longtime Democratic donor Deborah Simon to American Bridge.

So lots of numbers and a bit hard to track it in this article they way they reference, they need a table. An amazing amount of money for monthly numbers, even this late in the campaign.

Employers who force staff to return to the office five days a week have been called the “dinosaurs of our age” by one of the world’s leading experts who coined the term “presenteeism”.

Sir Cary Cooper, a professor of organisational psychology and health at the University of Manchester’s Alliance Manchester Business School, said employers imposing strict requirements on staff to be in the office risked driving away talented workers, damaging the wellbeing of employees and undermining their financial performance.

Rostov-on-Don hit again? Anyone have links to visuals?

Trump has the magic touch to juice turnout and excite Republicans in a way that his imitators do not. In 2018 and 2022, the two elections in the Trump era when the head honcho was not on the ballot, pro-Trump Republican candidates did poorly, running below expectations and losing winnable races. Meanwhile, even when Trump lost in 2020, he overperformed in public polling.

It’s an interesting puzzle: Many of Trump’s ideas are largely unpopular with voters; without his charisma, his ideological allies are left with policy positions like abortion bans that most Americans don’t really like. It’s Trump’s personality that keeps him happily ensconced at the head of the party.

The result is that candidates like Vance up and down state ballots try to build on Trump’s political legacy without being able to capture his personal one.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.one/post/15434778

Krugman chimes in on US national debt

Alternative link: https://archive.ph/ce08r

"Specifically, let me make three points. First, while $34 trillion is a very large figure, it’s a lot less scary than many imagine if you put it in historical and international context. Second, to the extent debt is a concern, making debt sustainable wouldn’t be at all hard in terms of the straight economics; it’s almost entirely a political problem. Finally, people who claim to be deeply concerned about debt are, all too often, hypocrites — the level of their hypocrisy often reaches the surreal.

How scary is the debt? It’s a big number, even if you exclude debt that is basically money that one arm of the government owes to another — debt held by the public is still around $27 trillion. But our economy is huge, too. Today, debt as a percentage of G.D.P. isn’t unprecedented, even in America: It’s roughly the same as it was at the end of World War II. It’s considerably lower than the corresponding number for Japan right now and far below Britain’s debt ratio at the end of World War II. In none of these cases was there anything resembling a debt crisis. ..."

Alternative link: https://archive.ph/ce08r

"Specifically, let me make three points. First, while $34 trillion is a very large figure, it’s a lot less scary than many imagine if you put it in historical and international context. Second, to the extent debt is a concern, making debt sustainable wouldn’t be at all hard in terms of the straight economics; it’s almost entirely a political problem. Finally, people who claim to be deeply concerned about debt are, all too often, hypocrites — the level of their hypocrisy often reaches the surreal.

How scary is the debt? It’s a big number, even if you exclude debt that is basically money that one arm of the government owes to another — debt held by the public is still around $27 trillion. But our economy is huge, too. Today, debt as a percentage of G.D.P. isn’t unprecedented, even in America: It’s roughly the same as it was at the end of World War II. It’s considerably lower than the corresponding number for Japan right now and far below Britain’s debt ratio at the end of World War II. In none of these cases was there anything resembling a debt crisis. ..."

Reddit made an initial public offering filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday ahead of its highly-anticipated stock market debut.

The social network plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “RDDT.” Its listing – expected in March – would be the largest IPO by a social media company since Pinterest went public in 2019.

How social media’s biggest user protest rocked Reddit

The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined, Reddit said in a statement.

The IPO filing revealed that Reddit sustained $90.8m in losses in 2023, as its revenue grew by roughly 21%. The business estimated that its US average revenue per user or ARPU, was $3.42 for the last quarter of 2023 – a decrease of 2% year over year...

Bill Gates name-checked Elon Musk and Steve Jobs during a fireside chat on Thursday. The Microsoft founder said he considers himself "very nice" compared to his fellow tech leaders. But Gates acknowledged that a certain level of intensity is required in innovative fields. Bill Gates said he considers himself a more relaxed boss than many of his tech compatriots at the top.

The Microsoft founder name-checked Elon Musk and Steve Jobs during a fireside chat on Thursday after being awarded the Peter G. Peterson Leadership Excellence Award by the Economic Club of New York.

The talk's moderator asked Gates about the lessons he learned in creating a culture of innovation during his time at the helm of Microsoft.

The billionaire, who co-founded the technology company with his childhood friend Paul Allen in 1975, said leaders like himself have to think about how "hardcore" they should be when spearheading innovative companies.

"Everybody is different. Elon pushes hard, maybe too much," Gates said, referencing Musk. "Steve Jobs pushed hard, maybe too much."

"I think of myself as very nice compared to those guys," he added with a laugh.

Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976 with Steve Wozniak, while Musk is the founder and SpaceX and the Boring Company, and cofounder of OpenAI and Neuralink.

Gates has a checkered history with both men. He and Jobs nursed a decades-long love-hate relationship, going from allies to rivals and back again several times. Their back-and-forth competitive spirit is often credited with spurring major innovations at both Microsoft and Apple over the years.

Steve Jobs Bill Gates Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Beck Diefenbach/Reuters; Mike Cohen/Getty Images for The New York Times

After Jobs died in 2011, Gates said he respected the Apple founder and was grateful for their competition.

The philanthropist's relationship with Musk has been even more turbulent in recent years. The two men have publicly poked at each other and frequently disagree on everything from space travel to climate change.

Gates told Musk's biographer, Walter Isaacson, that the Tesla CEO was "super mean" to him in 2022.

"Once he heard I'd shorted the stock, he was super mean to me, but he's super mean to so many people, so you can't take it too personally," Gates told Isaacson.

But Gates acknowledged during the Thursday discussion that a "certain intensity" is required to succeed as an innovative leader.

"In my 20s, I was monomaniacally focused on Microsoft," he said. "I didn't believe in weekends or vacations.'

The moderator asked Gates to confirm an urban legend that has circulated in recent years in which the billionaire memorized all of his employees' license plates during the early days of Microsoft so he could track who was putting in long hours at work.

"It wasn't that many license plates. We only had a few hundred employees," Gates said, seemingly confirming the tale.

"I can still tell you when they came in and out," he added.

Gates cites his intensity with the "positive experience" he had at Microsoft, which he said still guides his thinking today.

"I view every problem through this innovation lens," he said.

"For most markets where DoorDash operates, customers are prompted to tip on the checkout screen, with a middle option already selected by default. If they want to, they can adjust the tip later from the status screen while awaiting their food, or even after it’s delivered. That’s changing today; while blaming New York City’s minimum wage increase for delivery workers, DoorDash announced that for “select markets, including New York City,” tipping is now exclusively a post-checkout option"

It seems so ridiculous given tipping fatigue, that DoorDash is making what should be a given sound like a negative.