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4/12/25

Tariffs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIhO4AJ1ZBY 

High tariffs are historically accompanied by extreme wealth gains for the capitalist class

High tariffs may promote the rebirth of domestic manufacturing, but those job/salary gains are offset by an increase in consumer prices

Tariffs artificially inflate the prices of foreign products, and reduce competition for domestic producers, allowing them to jack up prices in turn

Conversely, free trade (ex. NAFTA), destroys domestic manufacturing and enables American companies to offshore manufacturing and pay foreign workers a fraction of what they would have to pay American workers, increasing corporate profits

If Trump was serious about promoting American industry and helping the working class, he would use our tax dollars to fund factory-building, but instead, he wants to cut taxes for the 1%

Trumps wants to use tariffs to fund the gov’t so he can eliminate the progressive income tax

*jazz hands* welsh miku

The vast majority (around 80%) of Chinese characters are made up of a radical (the general meaning) and a phonetic.

Radical 女 nǚ (woman) and phonetic 馬 mǎ (horse) = 媽 mā, mother (your mum sounds like a horse).

But a small minority are pictograms, that is to say a picture of the thing they represent.

Pictograms are the earliest characters, thousands of years old, but many are still used every day.

If you look at the oracle bone script for rat, tiger and elephant you’ll see they are clearly pictures of the animal they signify.

But if you look at the modern versions, you’ll notice something odd, they’re all rotated 90 degrees onto their sides.

Why? Why are all these characters written with the animals balancing on their tails?

Well, it’s for a straight-forward, practical reason.

For a couple thousand years before paper was invented writing materials were limited. We had silk (expensive), bronze (expensive and impractical), and oracle bones (religious use only).

And one more…

That was cheap, plentiful, durable, and easy to erase and rewrite characters. The wonder that is…

Bamboo!

It was cut into strips, and tied into books. Long thin strips of bamboo contributed to the Chinese custom of writing vertically, from top to bottom (and right to left).

But it also meant that it’s much easier to write some characters length-ways so that they easily fit onto the strip.

So that’s it, mystery solved. That’s why a lot of Chinese picture characters are written at a right angle.

pretty crier

EWAN MITCHELL as AEMOND TARGARYEN | House of the Dragon S2E4

David Oakes as George Plantagenet and Aneurin Barnard as Richard III THE WHITE QUEEN (2013)

hand studies

Ewan Mitchell for Esquire magazine by Guy Aroch

Leo Ashton & Ewan Mitchell as AEMOND TARGARYEN | parallels

Poster artwork for Lukas Dhont’s Close, one of my films of the year, and opening in Japan this Friday