It’s not just ordinary bread. It looks to be prosphora, or communion bread [1]. In Eastern Orthodox churches communion bread is leavened and it is prepared by hand often by laity [2].
I find it beautiful that such a small but sacred action still looks to be done the same way 1300 years later.
Yeah, I use a mobile broadband provider for my home internet connection (albeit through a 5g router rather than tethering - but that shouldn't make a difference).
Normal web browsing etc is more or less indistinguishable from fibre or cable. Streaming - including high participant count Zoom meetings for work, as well as 4k Netflix etc - works perfectly well too.
But bittorrent? Nah. The sheer number of connections quickly overload the link, the speed drops to a max of only 1 or 2 Mbps, and it kills off anything else I'm trying to do at the same time.
Pushing / pulling containers has a similar issue - I have to set image_parallel_copies = 3 in /etc/containers/containers.conf as the default of 6 can cause problems, especially if two or containers are being pulled at the same time. I reckon that the comfortable limit for the number of parallel connections on 5g is probably somewhere around 10.
Plus, y'know, range requests have been supported since HTTP/1.1 way back in the mid 90s, so resuming downloads should work just fine with the likes of wget or any normal web browser.
Saying that, the author also mentions that he was WiFi - so why doesn't he just use that rather than tethering? Doesn't matter if it's slow, he could always do something else on the tethered connection while he waits...
> 1. Tariffs are bringing in real money.
> The U.S. collected $195 billion in customs duties, more than double the prior year. That doesn’t capture the full jump because tariff rates only ramped up in April, halfway through the year.
That's actually more than I expected.
> President Trump seeks to shift the government’s reliance on income taxes toward taxes on imported goods. Still, tariffs contribute a relatively small 3.7% of overall federal revenue, compared with 51% for the individual income tax.
We really need to close large ccorporate tax dodges as well. Too many smaller companies pay 35% rates while the Apples and NVIDIAs pay a fraction of that rate. There's apparently plenty enough corporation money sloshing around to spend trillions on GPUs for AI in the US.
The tariffs don't actually bring in money, they just move money from one place (US taxpayers, who'd otherwise use it productively) and put it elsewhere (the treasury).
Now normally this might be put to some sensible use, perhaps building infrastructure, but since this revenue is being used to offset huge tax cuts for a tiny group of people determined to turn around and use the capital for (let's be real here) speculation it's a net negative.
In the end we're going to look back at this chapter of 'Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation' and say "Well obviously those idiots should've see that coming."
To say that tariffs don't actually bring in money is simply wrong. We are talking about income to the government. Yes, tariffs take actual money and give it to the government. It doesn't matter where it came from, inside or outside the US.
If your definitions are used, then literally nothing actually brings in money. It just moves it from one place to another.
Not true, issuing a loan brings in money (albeit mirrored by an equal amount of debt). So the federal deficit brings in a substantial amount of money. In the same vein, paying down the national debt completely, an oft-cited goal of some national leaders, destroys all money.
Setting aside the issue of generating money, which is not under discussion, and which loans can help with, do you really still claim that "The tariffs don't actually bring in money"? 51% of the government income is from income taxes, which you would say "doesn't actually bring in money." So what exactly is the point of talking the way you are talking?
Our current leadership and their populist supporters are super gung-ho on converting the US into a mercantile economy like China. That's what these tariffs are about: creating an environment of protectionism from which the US will emerge as an export powerhouse, with massive trade imbalances in the US' favor.
So in their own language, these tariffs are merely domestic transfers of capital and do not 'bring in money.'
The language under discussion is the national debt and deficit.
You’re trying to make a political point by changing the definition of words.
I may agree with your point, but pretending like tariffs don’t generate income that bring down the deficit is not the way to argue it. It just convinces people you aren’t arguing in good faith, or don’t understand simple math.
The last legal ruling on the matter found that they are mostly being enacted illegally by using emergency powers[1] and may end up being refunded entirely. So until they are actually able to be booked, we can't say they are impacting the budget one way or another. If they aren't legalized then the work it took to collect and then refund them all is money that may as well have been incinerated.
> The tariffs don't actually bring in money, they just move money from one place (US taxpayers, who'd otherwise use it productively) and put it elsewhere (the treasury).
So your argument seems to be “We have yet to see whether these new tariffs are legal and therefore whether the income will be able to be kept.”
That’s a far cry from saying tariffs don’t generate income for the government, which is what I understood you to be saying.
It's going to be the biggest heist in American history. That tariff revenue is as good as gone. It's not about whether the money can actually be brought in, but more about the reality that crooks have access to the pot. It's really all about that. These are not fiscal conservatives generating revenue to pay down debt, these are actual crooks that will gift it to each other.
With the global minimum tax rules in place, weighted by GDP and by revenue, corporate tax rates are actually fairly consistent across the world - roughly 25% worldwide. It's a myth that companies are not paying taxes, and also a myth that the largest sectors in the US are not paying taxes. It's a great talking point, though.
You also seem to be conflating investment for profit (GPUs for AI, for example) with income. Capital outlays of this type are almost always financed (see recently Nvidia, OpenAI + AMD, etc. deals). None of the large players are self-funding AI on that scale right now. This is why OpenAI's burn rate is so catastrophically high.
Perhaps for most companies, which was part of my point. But it's interesting to consider. I haven't read up too much on it in recent years.
The largest, most profitable international mega-corps always seem to pay much less because they can afford to game the system more.
It does look like my data is out of date concerning US corporate tax rates, which looks to be a flat 21% now from Trump's first term. Guess I'd only heard about the personal income tax breaks.
Spot checking Alphabet, it seems big corps might still be getting big tax breaks. A quick Google search on Alphabet Inc's effective tax rate AI summary of [1] gives:
> Alphabet's most recent effective tax rate was 16.91% for the quarter ending June 30, 2025, and 16.44% for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2024. The company's effective tax rate has varied, hitting a recent low of 13.9% in 2023 before increasing again in 2024.
That looks to be about 25% cut off their taxes.
Interesting tidbit: Averaging Alphabet's Q1&Q2 revenue and taxes and then calculating what they would pay at a 25%, 35%, or 21% corporate tax rate I get:
> est_annum_lost_vs_21 => $ 6,057 millions
> est_annum_lost_vs_25 => $12,115 millions
> est_annum_lost_vs_35 => $27,259 millions
So Google alone could be paying about 3.10% (or 6.21-13.97% with 25/35% rates) worth of the proceeds from tariffs just by itself.
Is that a big amount or not isn't clear to me. But it's an interesting perspective to consider.
> You also seem to be conflating investment for profit (GPUs for AI, for example) with income. Capital outlays of this type are almost always financed
True, and my comment over-simplifies all of that. Nevertheless those finance deals effect the debt markets raising the US government's interest rates. It also effects regular home buyers as well who will likely continue seeing higher mortgage rates.
Perhaps, if they were paying more of their fair share of taxes Nvidia, OpenAI + AMD, etc would have both less expected profits in the future and therefore less ability to finance such large amounts.
They're not shelling out the cash now. Given their general profitability and large cash reserves they can leverage even larger amounts of debt than they'd be able to otherwise.
Why should Nvidia pay any taxes except payroll for their local headcount? They could easily book all revenue overseas in tax heavens. They should pay more taxes to the places where chips are made, not to the US government.
The 2010s and Obama called - they want their foreign policy back.
Most countries (including the US) have signed global minimum tax rates at this point. Effective tax rates (either directly or via clawbacks) are theoretically 25%.
Of course, I am not enough of an expert to know if that is happening in China. I somewhat doubt it.
Actually, the US has joined. Although it has not joined Pillar II, the effective tax rate, according to third-party economists, shows adherence to the 25% number.
>We really need to close large ccorporate tax dodges as well. [...] There's apparently plenty enough corporation money sloshing around to spend trillions on GPUs for AI in the US.
This does not follow. The figures for "trillions" come from estimates for what will be spent in the next few years, not amount actually spent. Moreover while tech companies have initially funded their AI investments from their cash piles, they're now tapping debt markets to fund that growth, so the fact they're spending "trillions" doesn't imply they're evading taxes.
Corporations take their revenue to pay people as either employees or shareholders. I am not sure why we need to tax corporations at all. Take employees as income perhaps, tax dividends, tax shares being sold, but allow companies to use their money productively.
Though I would prefer a 0% income and capital tax, and we move to a pure land value tax and rent tax system.
There's a lot of ways to siphon money out of firms. People declare their car as a "work vehicle", CEOs fly to the beach on the company's jet, etc.
So I guess you want some level of corporate tax? (it's the same for why there are large sales tax in developing countries; sure they are less efficient than income taxes, but lots of people evade those)
>There's a lot of ways to siphon money out of firms. People declare their car as a "work vehicle", CEOs fly to the beach on the company's jet, etc.
That's why there are specific IRS regulations for this[1]. "Company cars" basically disappeared as a result. Moreover contrary to what you imply, corporate taxes don't really solve this issue either. Corporate taxes are paid on profit, not revenue, and expenses like "work vehicles" or private jets aren't taxed either way.
> Corporations take their revenue to pay people as either employees or shareholders. I am not sure why we need to tax corporations at all. Take employees as income perhaps, tax dividends, tax shares being sold, but allow companies to use their money productively.
I believe almost the opposite. We should tax corporations more and individuals less. As long as we keep estate taxes to curtail dynasties.
We have far too much concentration in towards ever larger, more powerful corporations. By their nature corporations lack ethics and morals of normal people. Even when operated by well meaning people the system anonymizes individuals and increases group think, etc. That's not purely a bad thing as it also enables large scalable systems which profit humanity as a whole. However there should also be curtails on corporate power and control.
>> President Trump seeks to shift the government’s reliance on income taxes toward taxes on imported goods. Still, tariffs contribute a relatively small 3.7% of overall federal revenue, compared with 51% for the individual income tax.
Doesn't he also say tariffs are going to cause manufacturing to move to the US? That seems at odds with tariffs as a replacement for income taxes.
Great links and even briefly skimming them makes me lean more towards zoonosis myself.
However, @hackingonempty's comment shows how dangerous over politicising these topics can be. Claiming lab-accident origin as a conspiracy theory stifles debates like the one linked.
Take a report from the first link where experts in the field still give a 21% chance to lab leak definitely takes it out of the range of conspiracy theories.
The only reason it was "removed" as a plausible origin was politics.
> asked how likely it is that COVID-19 originated from natural zoonosis, experts gave an average likelihood of 77% (median=90%). In fact, four out of five experts stated that a natural zoonotic origin was more than 50% likely.
> However, consensus was not complete. Across all experts, the average likelihood they gave for a research-related accident origin was 21%. Overall, one out of five experts reported a 50% or greater chance for an origin other than natural zoonosis.
Yeah, this is both true and tricky. My belief is that the original sin was politicizing the question soon after the beginning of the pandemic; both the Chinese and US governments are at fault here (destroying all the raccoon dogs seems like a very stupid action to me, for example).
I further believe that a lot of people overreacted to the rush to judgement. It is correct to say "we don't know yet" and in March/April 2020 it was wrong to say "this has to be a lab leak." But it's also wrong to overcorrect and say "it couldn't be a lab leak." That's both a political reaction and a human reaction.
Having worked in Science, "we don't know yet" is exactly the response I expected to hear from Science leaders. It's what the scientists I worked with said often, even about subjects they were legitimate experts in. One comes to expect the familiar.
Which is why "it couldn't be a lab leak" struck me like a ton of bricks when it was said.
My immediate response was "that's not science, he's not speaking like any scientist I know, and I know a few hundred."
My position in Science, as support personnel working on software related to funding requests, grants, research collection, and reporting, for nearly a decade, left me in that moment with a distinct feeling that the difference in communication was about protecting funding, reputations, positions, etc. Scientists are not dummies, and their communications with political agencies are very politically aware. I can see a scenario in which, to preserve public confidence in Science(TM) such false confidence might be presented. Gave me the heebie jeebies.
From the review I posted above:
"Whether such an escape is deliberate or accidental, the laboratory in question almost certainly must have known that an incident had occurred, such that their denial necessarily indicates a cover-up (74)."
That's what makes it a conspiracy theory, as used in the popular lexicon. While there is substantial evidence the initial transmission was from an animal at the Huanan market, the conspiracy theorists are running with a tiny bit of circumstantial evidence and a whole lot of conspiring between researchers and the Chinese government, etc...
> The only reason it was "removed" as a plausible origin was politics.
I disagree, at this point the evidence has stacked up and not in favor of the lab leak allegation. A major reason it persists is because of the efforts of the White House and their political appointees who want to cast blame on China.
I would love to see a peer reviewed review of the scientific evidence by an expert, like I posted above, that leads the author to the conclusion that the virus escaped from a lab.
Access to information has historically been a great equalizer.
Not to diminish Gates’ malaria efforts, but remote villages having access to information about malaria and prevention methods could be helpful. Along with techniques for filtering water, etc. Access to telehealth.
There's almost like an "uncanny valley" type situation with good products. As in new technologies start out promising, but less okay. Then as they get better they becomes close to being a "good project" the more it's not there yet. In that way it could feel sort of worse than a mediocre project. Until it's done.
Good point, if Google had released the first version of Bard or whatnot as the first LLM it probably would've received some good press but also a lot of "eh just another Google toy side project". I could've seen myself saying that.
I find it beautiful that such a small but sacred action still looks to be done the same way 1300 years later.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosphora 2: https://www.stdemetriosmi.org/parish-resources/prosphora-bak...
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