prior probability

Was the U.S. military raid against ISIS strongman Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi illegal? After all, Congress has not authorized the use of force in Syria nor declared war against ISIS. By comparison, what if a Mexican drug cartel or an Iranian mullah ordered a hit against the president?

When poor people break the rules, overzealous prosecutors and judges throw the book at them, but when wealthy people commit even worse misdeeds, they get the proverbial slap on he wrist. What kind of bullshit justice is that?

Guess who served only 11 days …

This is what we will be viewing over the weekend; more details about this documentary are available here, via NPR.

Have you read David Leonhardt’s exposé in the N.Y. Times “The Rich Really Do Pay Lower Taxes Than You“? According to Mr Leonhardt: “For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans last year paid a lower total tax rate–spanning federal, state, and local taxes–than any other income group ….” What this selective quotation does not tell you, however, is that the overall tax rate on the richest 400 households last year was “only” 23 percent and that the top 1% paid the highest total tax rate (between 29 and 30 percent)! So, why not get rid of all taxes and replace our current complicated and convoluted system with a “single tax“? (In case you are wondering, here is a list of the 400 wealthiest Americans.)

File under “the mysteries of pricing.” As of this writing, it will cost you $25 USD to park your car at a distant parking lot (the tram ride to the park is “free”) and $50 USD if you want to avoid the tram and park your car next to the theme park itself. Why doesn’t Disney just add the cost of parking to the price of each theme park ticket (say, an extra $5 per entrance ticket) and make parking “free”?

They aren’t the only ones to have secret Twitter “burner” accounts, but what motivates this contemporary form of moral cowardice? What if every Twitter user had their own burner account? Bonus question: Does the President (@realDonaldTrump) have a secret Twitter persona as well?

Above is Joan Miró’s painting Personage depicting one of his dreams from the 1920s. According to this blurb, Miró’s art was “stimulated … by hunger-induced hallucinations involving his impressions of poetry. These resulted in the artist’s ‘dream paintings,’ such as Personage, in which ghostly figures hover in a bluish ether…. In these [dream] works Miró began to develop his own language of enigmatic signs: the forms in Personage depict a large vestigial foot and a head with three ‘teeth’ in its grinning mouth. The star shape often represents female genitalia in Miró’s oeuvre, and the dot with four rays symbolizes the vision of a disembodied eye.” The dream painting above is part of the Guggenheim’s collection in New York City.

Celia Cruz was born on this day in 1925 in Havana. ¡Libertad para mi Cuba!

Hat tip: @kottke