Tag Archives: Real

Not paying enough rent? New startup Rentberry could change that

by CelsaCowen129 Posted on May 18, 2016

Not paying enough rent? New startup Rentberry could change that

By on May 18, 2016 3:50 amShare

As if life for renters in big cities weren’t hellish enough, a new Bay Area startup promises to make it even more of a nightmare. Meet Rentberry.

The company, which launched Tuesday, is an auction site for rental properties brought to you by a team of pale people. Assuming this isn’t a scam or an elaborate Yes Men–style prank to draw attention to the soaring cost of housing, here’s how it’s supposed to work: Property owners list their units on the site, and then potential tenants compete to outbid each other for the privilege of having a place to live. Sounds great, right?

No, it sounds awful. The median rent for a one-bedroom in San Francisco is already a mind-blowing $3,560 a month, and Rentberry promises to make it go even higher. As of now, Rentberry only directly charges tenants — they must pay $25 at the time of lease signing — but the company intends to start charging landlords in the next six months or so. The plan, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, is that Rentberry will charge landlords 25 percent of the extra rent they generate beyond their initial asking price each month. So, if your landlord lists an apartment for $5,000 and the final bid is $6,000, Rentberry takes a quarter of the extra $1,000, or $250 a month.

Rentberry says that it is providing a service, and that tenants will save an average of seven to 10 hours of apartment hunting through the bidding process. But while saving all of 10 hours may be worth it for top earners, for everyone else, Rentberry is just the latest threat against the non-rich in San Francisco. Plus, Rentberry could be especially damaging for people of color: The site asks renters to provide profile photos, and, thanks to reports of minorities who’ve been declined service on sites like Airbnb, we know that housing discrimination through technology is very real.

So will renters actually go along with using a service built on the premise of increasing their rent? A quick poll of renters among the Grist staff returned comments from “lol” to “fuck no” to “NEVER.”

Then again, you can see the benefit for landlords. And that’s where the real threat comes in: Even though no renter in their right mind would freely choose to use a service designed to make their rent go up, if lots of landlords start using it, they may not have much choice.

Here’s hoping Rentberry is just a scam after all.

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Not paying enough rent? New startup Rentberry could change that

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Donald Trump Denies "Masquerading" as His Own Spokesman

by LakeishLeHunte Posted on May 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump is shooting down a report by the Washington Post that claims the real estate magnate and presidential hopeful used to call members of the press pretending to be his own spokesman. According to the Post, he used the pseudonyms John Miller and John Barron—two names Trump admitted under oath in 1990 to using “on occasion.”

Speaking on the Today Show on Friday, Trump dismissed the allegations as a “scam,” saying the voice captured in the phone call recording did not resemble his own.

“You’re telling me about it for the first time, and it doesn’t sound like my voice at all,” Trump said. “I have many, many people that are trying to imitate my voice, you can imagine that. This sounds like one of the scams, one of the many scams.”

Earlier on Friday, the Post published audio from a 1991 phone call reportedly recorded by People magazine reporter Sue Carswell. In the audio, Carswell can be heard talking to a man who introduced himself as John Miller but sounds very much like Trump. The report goes on to cite other journalists who recalled a John Miller or John Barron contacting them, sometimes as far back as the 1970s, through similar guises to promote Trump with flattering stories.

To hear the recording in its entirety, head to the Washington Post.

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Donald Trump Denies "Masquerading" as His Own Spokesman

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Heroic Passenger Recognizes Quantitative Economics as True Threat to America

by AdanPrimrose Posted on May 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Forget ethnic profiling. The real danger facing America these days is economists and their differential equations:

On Thursday evening, a 40-year-old man — with dark, curly hair, olive-skinned and an exotic foreign accent — boarded a plane. It was a regional jet making a short, uneventful hop from Philadelphia to nearby Syracuse.

….The curly-haired man tried to keep to himself, intently if inscrutably scribbling on a notepad he’d brought aboard His seatmate, a blond-haired, 30-something woman sporting flip-flops and a red tote bag, looked him over….He appeared laser-focused — perhaps too laser-focused — on the task at hand, those strange scribblings.

….Then, for unknown reasons, the plane turned around and headed back to the gate….Finally the pilot came by, locking eyes on the real culprit behind the delay: that darkly-complected foreign man….The curly-haired man was, the agent informed him politely, suspected of terrorism.

The curly-haired man laughed. He laughed because those scribbles weren’t Arabic, or some other terrorist code. They were math. Yes, math. A differential equation, to be exact.

It’s about goddam time, I say. Personally, I’d say that economists and their math have done a lot more damage to the world recently than terrorists and their bombs. We owe this flip-flop-wearing woman our thanks.

On a more serious note, can it really be true that no one recognized what decorated young Italian economist Guido Menzio was doing? Sure, maybe his seatmate didn’t recognize math. But neither the flight attendant nor the pilot recognized math-ish scribblings when they came back to take a look at things? “What might prevent an epidemic of paranoia?” Menzio wrote on Facebook. “It is hard not to recognize in this incident, the ethos of Donald Trump’s voting base.” And that’s quite true: Donald Trump is notoriously an idiot at math. I suppose his followers are too.

POSTSCRIPT: You know what’s missing from this story? The actual page of math Menzio was working on in the plane. Admit it: you want to see it too. You’re all such a bunch of nerds.

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Heroic Passenger Recognizes Quantitative Economics as True Threat to America

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John Kasich Drops Out of Presidential Race

by DianTrivett Posted on May 4, 2016

Mother Jones

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John Kasich announced Wednesday evening that he was dropping out of the presidential race, leaving Donald Trump as the sole Republican contender and almost-certain nominee. Kasich’s announcement comes less than 24 hours after Trump’s sweeping Indiana primary victory sent shock waves through the political world and prompted Ted Cruz to abandon the race. Following Cruz’s announcement, GOP chairman Reince Priebus called Trump the presumptive nominee on Twitter and encouraged Republicans to rally behind the real estate mogul.

Unlike Cruz, Kasich never had much of a shot at becoming the GOP’s nominee. On the campaign trail, he touted positions—expanding Medicaid, supporting a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants, and more—that seemed removed from the typical attitudes of the GOP electorate. The Ohio governor won only one state primary: his own. But with Cruz out of the race, Kasich represented the GOP’s last, long-shot hope for somehow stopping Trump from winning the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination.

Shortly after Cruz dropped out Tuesday night, Kasich’s campaign assured voters he would be staying in the game. “It’s up to us to stop Trump and unify our party in time to defeat Hillary Clinton,” Kasich’s campaign manager, Ben Hansen, wrote in an email to supporters.

But Wednesday evening, during a speech in Columbus, Ohio, Kasich changed course. He opened by thanking his family, his wife, and his campaign staff and volunteers. He recounted some of the interactions with voters he had on the campaign trail: “The people of our country changed me with the stories of their lives,” Kasich said. He ended on a somber note: “As I suspend my campaign today, I have renewed faith, deeper faith, that the Lord will show me the way forward and fulfill the purpose of my life.”

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John Kasich Drops Out of Presidential Race

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Childhood Obesity Is Still Going Up, Up, Up

by JonahMilliner Posted on May 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hey, do you remember that breathless CDC study from a couple of years ago showing a dramatic drop in obesity among 2-5-year-olds? I was pretty skeptical about it, and today I learn that I was right to be. I basically figured that it was a noisy sample that didn’t make sense, but according to a new look at the data it’s worse than that: the data is noisy, and that allowed the CDC researchers to cherry pick a starting point that made it look like there was a huge drop.

Roberto Ferdman provides a new chart based on the new study. Take a look. If you start in 2003, as the CDC study did, it looks like there’s a big drop. The prevalence of obesity among girls goes down 2.1 percentage points, and among boys it goes down a whopping 6.1 percentage points.

But if you include data going back to 1999, which is the true beginning of this data series, the improvement is distinctly more modest: a drop of 1.1 percentage points for girls and 1.7 percentage points for boys. And those drops aren’t even statistically significant.

The original study was always suspect because the alleged drop for 2-5-year-olds wasn’t matched in any other age group. And sure enough, a fresh look at the rest of the data continues to show rising obesity for every other age group. Suddenly the results for 2-5-year-olds look perfectly in sync.

It’s one thing if this newer study shows different results because it includes 2013-14 data. But deliberately excluding the starting point of the data series is the real culprit, and that’s inexcusable. The authors of the original study have some explaining to do.

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Childhood Obesity Is Still Going Up, Up, Up

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In Trumpland, Who’s Conning Whom?

by JanelleWeldon2 Posted on April 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump is getting a lot of flak from liberals for this confession from his new campaign honcho:

Trump’s newly hired senior aide, Paul Manafort, made the case to Republican National Committee members that Trump has two personalities: one in private and one onstage. “When he’s out on the stage, when he’s talking about the kinds of things he’s talking about on the stump, he’s projecting an image that’s for that purpose,” Manafort said in a private briefing.

….The Associated Press obtained a recording of the closed-door exchange. “He gets it,” Manafort said of Trump’s need to moderate his personality. “The part that he’s been playing is evolving into the part that now you’ve been expecting, but he wasn’t ready for, because he had first to complete the first phase. The negatives will come down. The image is going to change.”

This is basically being taken as an admission that Trump has just been conning his followers so far, and he’ll turn on a dime when he needs to. But that’s not how I take it.

First, I doubt that this recording was leaked. Rather, it was “leaked.” The Trump campaign wanted it to become public. Sure, it will inspire some mockery from liberals and campaign reporters, but that’s never done Trump any harm. And since leaks are usually taken as a glimpse into the real behind-the-scenes truth, this is the most effective way to get his message out to the public in a credible way.

And how will the public respond? Unlike us hyper-engaged folks, they’ll just take it as an assurance that Trump can act like an adult when he wants to. More subtly, his current fans will also take it as a hint that his adult persona will be meant primarily not to con them, but to con centrist Republicans. With a wink and a nod, he’s telling them he’ll do what he has to do in order to appeal to the corrupt establishment folks, but not to take it too seriously.

And if Trump can pull it off, it might very well work: the establishment folks will start to fall in line, impressed by the “new” Donald. They’re so certain that only yokels can be conned, it will never occur to them that they’re the real marks.

But that’s if Trump can do it. Can he?

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In Trumpland, Who’s Conning Whom?

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Watch Donald Trump Blast the GOP’s "Crooked System" in His NY Victory Speech

by TabathaThatcher Posted on April 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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Speaking from Trump Tower in Manhattan on Tuesday, Donald Trump celebrated his resounding victory in New York’s Republican primary. The GOP front-runner took the opportunity to dismiss his challengers, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, and to declare the race essentially over.

“Senator Cruz is just about mathematically eliminated,” Trump told a crowd of supporters. “We’ve won another state. As you know we have won a million more votes than Senator Cruz. Millions and millions of more votes than Governor Kasich.”

“We’re really, really rocking,” he added.

The real estate magnate closed out his victory speech by once again criticizing the Republican party, describing its presidential nomination system as “rigged.” At one point, Trump even referenced the battle that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are currently waging for the support of Democratic superdelegates.

“Nobody should take delegates and claim victory unless they get those delegates with voters and voting,” he said. “And that’s what’s going to happen, and you watch, because the people aren’t going to stand for it. It’s a crooked system.”

Original article:

Watch Donald Trump Blast the GOP’s "Crooked System" in His NY Victory Speech

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Breaking: The climate is changing because a Koch brother said so

by AntwanDwy531240 Posted on April 12, 2016

Breaking: The climate is changing because a Koch brother said so

By on 12 Apr 2016commentsShare

The climate is officially changing, as the eternally wise petrochemical billionaire Charles Koch, a notorious climate denial funder, has declared it to be so.

Koch Industries’ Environmental, Health and Safety Director Sheryl Corrigan made the comment about Koch’s climate beliefs at a recent event hosted by The Wall Street Journal, reports Environment & Energy Publishing. So sayeth Koch, and it shall be true:

“Charles has said the climate is changing. So, the climate is changing,” Corrigan said. “I think he’s also said, and we believe, that humans have a part in that. I think what the real question is … what are we going to do about it?”

Koch has been see-sawing over climate change for years. At one point, Koch acknowledged that “it’s been warming some” to The Washington Post in 2015, then quickly qualified his statements an interview with Forbes, saying he believes “it’s not certain” that humans are to blame for climate change. This statement seems to be the first time Koch has been said to attribute human activity to global warming.

But throughout it all, Koch has been actively supporting lobbyists and climate skeptics. While blasting “crony capitalism,” he and his political network has said they plan to spend nearly $900 million during the 2016 presidential election race. His roster of climate-related fundees includes scientists who are critical of climate science and members of Congress who signed a pledge promising to vote against climate legislation in 2013.

Koch hasn’t publicly commented on Corrigan’s statements just yet, so we can’t be sure that the climate will still be changing tomorrow.

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Email Newsletters Are a Blight on Mankind

by Kristop6857 Posted on March 31, 2016

Mother Jones

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Justin Wolfers is annoyed by the email newsletter bubble. Brad DeLong comments:

Authors seeking both eyeballs to sell to advertisers and a committed, engaged audience with which they can conduct a conversation are now trying to ride two horses—a clickbait audience served by self-contained pieces, and a newsletter audience with which they can interact and converse. I don’t think it is working very well.

Is that what’s happening? I’ve always thought there was something different going on: the professionalization of the blogosphere has, ironically, made blogs too stuffy and corporate. If you want to write a post complaining that the local supermarket doesn’t carry the brand of peanut butter you like, you can hardly do this at Vox.com or 538 or the Washington Monthly.1 Those sites are reserved for serious commentary. So if you still want to write that kind of stuff, you do it in a newsletter that’s all yours and nobody else controls.

But Brad is suggesting that the real motivator is a desire to—what? Avoid the trolls? (Who cares about trolls?) Write in a more interactive space? (How are newsletters more interactive than blogs?) Write in a more private space where you can toss out weird ideas with less potential for blowback? (Cowards.) Create “added value” for subscribers who will hopefully donate money to you/your employer? (You corporate shill, you.)

I think we should toss this question to the newsletter writers. What’s the deal? If you need a second writing space, why not a quick-and-dirty blogspot blog or Tumblr or Medium? Why the throwback to email?

1I typically solve this problem by writing this kind of stuff on weekends, which I consider a more personal space. So far, nobody has disabused me of this notion.

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Email Newsletters Are a Blight on Mankind

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Everybody Is Wrong

by SonyaSleeman7 Posted on March 31, 2016

Mother Jones

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Atrios is unhappy with how the left is treated:

I’m struck by how everything The Left does is wrong. Not just in terms of policy, but tactics. Running a third party candidate is wrong (I actually agree with this generally!), running in a major party primary is wrong, protesting is wrong, protesting the wrong way is wrong, not protesting is wrong, having a journal of important Lefty ideas is wrong, not catering to the feefees of Real Americans is wrong, proposing legislation is wrong, objecting to racism and sexism is wrong. There’s a longer list, I’m sure, but self-styled “moderates” chastise Lefties no matter what they do.

I dunno. I’m pretty sure we all feel this way. I’m a more moderate liberal than Atrios, but as near as I can tell I’m also wrong about pretty much everything. Hillary is a liar, Glass-Steagall did too cause the economic collapse, nobody votes for a squish, it’s all just privilege, Bernie is going to lead a revolution and his numbers add up just fine, I’m a shill for big corporations, Obama is a total sellout, etc.

On the conservative side, where I can take a more Olympian view of things, it’s pretty obvious the same thing is true. The tea partiers hate the RINOs, the RINOs hate Trump, and the Trumpettes hate everyone. One side are sellouts, the other side is just a bunch of purity mongers.

That’s life. In politics, you’re always wrong according to everyone who’s not you—and the more extreme you get, the wronger you are. That’s the price of being in the arena, or even just being a spectator cheering against the Romans.

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Everybody Is Wrong

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